Flew from the Midwest Thursday night and because of weather problems, I didn't get into McCarran until almost 3 a.m. Friday morning. Luckily, I was able to sleep on the plane some because a bunch of friends were playing in one of the WSOP events. I am not nearly experienced enough to play in any of those events, but I did want the experience of a big tournament, so I bought in for the cheaper and more managable Friday afternoon $550 Venetian Deep Stack.

I finally got to the Venetian, where we were staying around 3:45.
I woke up around 10 or so and after grabbing a muffin at the French coffee shop in the V (yummy!), I went to go register for the Deep Stack around 10:30. Shockingly, they had already sold the tournament out! Luckily, I was the 9th alternate, but I was going to have to wait to play until somebody busted out. Aargh.

I sat down to play a little 1-2 before the tournament started, and it seemed like everybody there was just waiting to play in the Deep Stack. Got into trouble early with Kings. I raised to $15 from early position, and got 2 calls behind. Flop came Q-10-4 rainbow. I made a $25 continuation bet, which was called by an older gentleman. Turn came an 8, and I bet $45. Almost immediately, the gentleman raised to $110. He seemed like a solid player, so I gave him credit for a hand and laid it down. I began to remember why I don’t like playing in short sessions - you just don’t have the feel for a table when you are only there for an orbit or so. Luckily, I was able to double back up with pocket 8s when I called a standard pre-flop raise and the flop came 10-10-8. Cashed out ~+$10.

The Venetian shut its cash games around 11:30 in preparation of the Deep Stack tournament. Have I mentioned yet how much I like this room? The management seems to really know what it is doing, the room is beautiful and well-lit, the servers are ridiculously hot, and both the players and dealers are quite competent. In any case, with starting stacks of 10,000, I was not surprised to find nobody bust out for quite a while. Even though I was the 9th alternate, it took almost 35 minutes for me to enter the game.

A couple of orbits worth of blinds had been taken out, but that wasn’t a big deal. Of course, somebody had knocked out my seat, so there were a couple of big stacks at the table, including one guy from Denmark who was trying to play table captain. He mentioned a few times that he played poker for a living and he seemed pretty good - he played a lot of pots and seemed to be connecting with a few of them. In the two hours that I was there he busted a couple of people by catching two pair with random hands. Nothing too memorable happened for about an hour - I played a few somewhat small pots with reasonably good hands, but nothing huge happened. I saw my stack drop to ~8,000 or so.

First important hand happened with the blinds at 100-200. A new player who was an alternate and had been sitting for about an orbit and raised to $800. The guy to my right calls, and I looked down at Kd Kh. With two players in the pot, I wanted to make sure we didn’t get too many more people in the pot and I raised to $2500. The first woman calls and the guy to my right calls. Flop comes Jd, 6d, 4d. Check-check to me, and I bet $4,000. The woman goes in the tank and eventually folds. The man also goes in tank, but eventually raised all-in. I call, and he flips over pocket 10s with no diamond! Definitely a very weird play - by far the worst I saw all day. I was clearly pot committed with my bet on the flop, so the raise wasn’t going to be able to get me off the hand. Anyway, he didn’t hit his one-outer, and I ended the hand around $18,000. I played small pot poker for the next hour or so, and after 3 hours, I had around 16 or 17K.

I was then moved to my next table. After sitting for a few minutes, I picked up a couple of nice hands, A-K and KQs and won a couple of smallish pots to $22K. At this table, there were a couple of stacks that were quite a bit bigger than the others at the table. I think those guys had $40K or $50K while everybody else seemed to be around $8-15K. In any event, after about 30 minutes, one of the big stacks UTG raised to $2500 and the other big stack, sitting next to him, called. I looked down at Kings again and I raised to $10,000 in the sb. Both big stacks folded. In retrospect, I think I might have played that one differently. Both of the big stacks were quite young (I was amazed that either was 21 years old), but both had played very solidly in the half hour or so that I was watching them. I think that maybe a smooth call might have been in better order. With stacks so deep, I don’t think there was any particular reason to drive them off of their hands. If nothing else, I think I may have had a shot at picking off the inevitable continuation bet. I’d love thoughts on what people would do in this situation.

I think I made another mistake about 30 minutes later. With 5-5 in early position, I limped. One of the two big stacks raised in middle position to $3K and I called. Flop came 10-8-4. I checked, and the big stack bet the pot. I had about $19K at the time left behind and with a $6K bet, I didn’t know what to do. I felt like there was an excellent chance he had two big cards, and would fold if I played back at him. On the other hand to do anything more than min-raise would have committed my stack. I eventually folded on the last hand before our table was split up. Again, I’d love thoughts.

My next table was quite interesting. There were a couple of bigger stacks at the next table, but my $19K was a little above average for the table, though the average stack for the tournament at the time was about $25K. I’d say the biggest stack at the table when I was moved was maybe $40K. The next couple of hours were really a grind for me. Very few flops were seen with almost everything being raised and folded or raised and re-raised with a fold. I was able to hang around $19K with some steals and small bluffs, but nothing huge happened. A couple of times I made a standard raise, was re-raised big and threw away my hands (once 6s, once Ajo). The next big hand: in early position, I was dealt pocket 3s and called. The guy to my right made a standard raise (I don’t remember exactly what the blinds were here) and I called. Flop comes J-7-3 rainbow. I check, the guy to my left put me all-in (he had about $10K stack) and I called. He flipped over Q-10 and I was up to $30K. I am not sure why he didn’t make a more regular sized continuation bet, but I wasn’t going to complain. The next big hand happened maybe an orbit later. I picked up Aces in early position and made a standard raise to a guy who I had been sort of picking on (I had stolen his big blind probably 3 times in the previous hour), and he raised me all-in. I called and he had A-Q. I picked up another $15K or so in this hand and went into the dinner break around $50K.

I don’t remember exactly how many players were left at the dinner break, which happened at 7:30, but for some reason I want to say it was about 80. 40 cashed and I was about an average stack, I think. Over the next two hours, I stayed at that table and there were about 5 hands where a player was either not all-in or where the blinds and antes were stolen. I had one big hand during that time - I held AKo v. a 44 and I won that race against another medium stack. I was probably the 3rd biggest stack for most of those levels, which was good because I could make a steal attempt without feeling like my tournament life was at stake. I was probably slightly more aggressive than the other players were in stealing, which was good because the blinds and antes were so hefty at the time.

We got to the money around 11 or 11:30, I think, and for the 30 minutes or so after we reached 40, things got quite a bit looser. With about $100K, and the blinds at 8K-16K with 2K antes, I raised in early position with Ajo to ~$40K (I don’t remember exactly). The button raised all-in for another $25K or so. Hoping he had a smallish pocket pair, I called. He had AK and it held up. I went out a couple of hands later in (I think) 28th place around 1 a.m for a $1200 cash. I’d love advice on the hand. I would have guessed that my $100K stack was probably around the median when I made the move with AJ, and it would have been great to get into the final two tables. On the other hand, picking up the blinds and antes is definitely essential when they are so high. I am just wondering if I should have been a little more patient.

A few impressions about the tournament. First, the tournament has a great blind structure. It gets steep after a while, but you can definitely comfortably play for the first four hours or so. After a while, you definitely need to step up the stealing a little bit, but I think that’s generally a big part of tournament play. Second, I was quite impressed with the tournament directors and dealers. In 13 hours of play, I did not see a single mistake from the dealers. There were a couple of exposed cards and unruly players at a couple of my tables, and the management was fair and prompt about making decisions and doling out punishment. Third, I don’t know if I just got lucky or if this is somewhat typical for this tournament, but I ran into almost no monster stacks at my tables. There were, of course, some stacks that were bigger than others, but not that many people had stacks that were so huge that they could easily push everybody else around. I was definitely surprised by that. Lastly, I was quite impressed with the level of play. Very few truly head-scratching moves and everybody really seemed to know what they were doing. When we got down to 40, and I looked around the table, I only saw really solid players.

Sorry for the long post - I hope to see you guys in Vegas soon.