I played $100/$200 No Limit in Bobby's Room

I’ve posted some photos to Instagram of myself sitting behind a $100,000 chip stack. I’m not talking about tournament chips, these are actually cash value poker chips. People always want to know the story behind it, so I’m going to share. How many poker players can say they’ve played in the exclusive Bobby’s Room at the Bellagio in Las Vegas? I’d say 1% of the poker player pool have played there. With minimum buy-ins in the 10’s of thousands to 100’s of thousands, and blinds like $1000/$2000, it requires a certain type of person to afford to play. My bankroll allows me to play poker comfortably at the $2/$5 blind levels and that’s what I was playing on a regular basis. I started a YouTube vlog of my journey playing poker and have gained a respectable following.

If you’ve read my previous blog posts, you know I left my job go pursue playing poker and moved across the country to play cash games in Las Vegas. I was grinding poker 4-5 nights a week and was a consistent regular at the Bellagio. One random night in early 2018, I was playing $2/$5 near the outside rail of the room and a well known high stakes professional poker player recognized me from my videos. He was having a cigarette right outside of the room and yelled over to my table calling me out by name. “Priest, come play my stack for me in Bobby’s room.” You can imagine the look on my face, I came back with a statement like… “They won’t let you play other people’s stacks here.” I guess when you play in the highest stakes games in Vegas, they’re a little more relaxed on the rules. I kept asking if he was sure, and he assured me it was fine. I enthusiastically got up from my seat and followed him into Bobby’s Room.

Surprisingly I was not nervous at all and treated it like I was playing any other game of Holdem. I was posting $200 for a big blind and was playing for pots of several thousand dollars. I just got up from a game where the maximum buy-in was $500!. The experience was unreal and unforgettable. He kept encouraging me to take pictures and videos to share my experience and I absolutely did that. However, he wanted to remain anonymous. There were so many chips in front of me, I don’t know how much I started the session with but, I estimate that I increased the stack between $8,000-$12,000. This experience lit a fire under me to keep improving my poker skills so that I could one day be playing at those stakes with my own money. Fast forward 1.5 years and I’ve crossed paths with him again and he’s helped with some of the things we’re doing in the Thirst Lounge project. I’ve always preached that if you put yourself in the position to succeed and put in the work, good things will happen. I’m 2 years into playing poker full-time and I’m just getting started.