Hey folks, my name is Rich. I quit poker in 2014 after playing for 12 years since I was about 16 years old. Here's my ancient blog in German:
https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/de/forum/thread.php?postid=15049429#post15049429
After a quiet year, a dubious side job and a semi-profitable side business in numismatics, I started creating software, and later helping create software, instead of poker. Since then, I‘ve only played and organized a handful of poker rounds. But I‘ve always kept saying that maybe building software will ultimately be just a path to building my bankroll and getting into poker again some day. 
And here I was, only 10+ years forward, I visited Las Vegas, the place I wanted to die in when poker was my main passion. Admittedly, I was just here for an amazing marketing conference (Funnel Hacking Live), but after it was over, I wanted to see what‘s out there and I how I‘d be performing nowadays at real tables. I was shocked that most of the Las Vegas casinos actually turned off the poker floors during COVID. But I made my research and wrote down a few places that might be worth visiting.
After the conference, I had 4 days left in Vegas and I wasn't in too much of a mood for playing. After a couple of drinks at a stand-up comedy show I finally decided to walk from the Welcome to Fabulous Vegas shield to the Aria hotel, one of the recommended places. It was quite a walk and it turned out there was a 28 people list for the 1/3 tables. So I decided to continue wander until I bumped into the Bellagio poker room which had a free spot. I planned to stay for like an hour, but sat there until 7am because I couldn't let my eyes off of all the fun people sitting down on my right splashing chips around and/or being on the next level of drunk.
This was enough to get me hooked and let me try different casinos. I really was just playing for fun, so I haven't written down any cool hands. Generally, though, my brain is working quite differently compared to 10 years ago. I'd say I can hold more things in my brain and calculate more branches simultaneously. I think tables were generally better than the average 10 years ago in the Berlin casino, but at the same time, I am still optimistic: The actual challenge nowadays for people is holding their attention. Even if they are somewhat OK players, it amazes me how much the phone is present on the US poker tables. You weren't allowed to sit with a phone at the table in Berlin or in Barcelona as far as I remember. I mean you could look at it once in a while but you couldn't have it on the table watching TikTok and YouTube for several hours...
I definitely wouldn't let off my habit of tracking time and money stats, so here we go for the 4 days:
Session Sunday
23am-7am (8h)
+$485
Session Monday
23am-3am (4h)
+$225
Session Tuesday
23am-2am (3h)
+$400
(- $100 Slot machines Crazy Kittens - I usually don't do that, long story)
Session Wednesday
20:30-00:00 (3.5h)
-$105
I'm thinking of "exploiting" the tables again, about once a month or so and report the stats here, with a nice story from the streets and with an analysis of a big hand that went down. I think that could be a good enough format to start with.
By the way, I‘m RichStoneIO on X and Rich Steinmetz everywhere else if you wanna connect for one reason or another. 👋
