July Post Mortem and Next.

Well, that wasn't great.

The trip was standard, the gambling was not. Absolutely got ass-blasted on VP. Took $6K bankroll, came back with $400.

I have thoughts.

I realize, and even realized DURING the trip, that I expect to win on VP now. My VP skills have evolved enough and I play perfect strategy to the point that if I don't hit at least one handpay on a trip I'm peeved. On this trip, I was very peeved. It made what should have been a fun trip, less so. Much less so. And it shouldn't be.

In the old days I expected to lose my whole bankroll. It's a budget, and more often than not (see about 90% of these post-mortems) I came back with bupkus. It didn't really bother me. But now that 3 out of the last 5 trips have been successful (coming back basically even or at least only down a bit) that has now become an expectation. 

The rest of the trip was fine. I did fun things, had some good meals, saw a lot of my Vegas buds, it was good. MB was good. Good room, resort a little busy due to a volleyball tourney but generally very nice. I slept OK. I did OK physically. It was a good vacation. But every day I had a mold on because I wasn't gambling well.

So what is needed is a mindset change. I'm NOT going to stop going to Vegas, obviously. But I need to get back to the former trip head space that if I'm bad gambling, don't chase the losses. Go to the bar. Get a piece of pizza. Talk to a girl. Don't dwell on the dollars. It's Vegas, it's not going to pay you every time or even half the time. You can't let bad "luck" drag you down on a whole trip.

So the reality is, as was the case after last summer's trip, I'm financially fucked for a while. There will be no late summer/fall trip. Xmas is the next trip, and after the cash and CC damage done I'll need the financial recovery time just to do that.

That said - we scale the trip back a bit. The 7-night Xmas trip days are done, at least this year. 5 days/nights. That'll be it, with an option if I'm doing well to add a day on the end, but likely it will be a relative shorty. And that's fine. I can pay down the CC to normalcy and build up $5K this time rather than $6-7K. It's a 6 month trip gap and frankly, the way I feel right now, that's fine. I can focus on the City for a while and my finances and shit, maybe even my health.

So, taking a vacation from Vegas, and probably from the blog. See ya later.