Strictly Poker Blog

OK, so I just got knocked out of the Venetian Deep Stack $540 event in 30th place for a $864 cash. I'm in a really bad mood because I played for 12 hours and made $300 when the winner was at $60K, but that's just how it goes. What really irritates me is that this tournament prides itself on the "great structure," but that's a joke. Every single online tournament has a better structure than this one except the turbos. When you get up to 3/6k blinds with 1000 ante and the average stack is 120K, that's 20 big blinds, but an M of between 6-7. There is just no play allowed at that point. I hate being in these situations because most decisions are standard and the cards will dictate all the action.


Let's run through the key hands. For the first 3 levels, I again could get nothing going and basically just played solid looking for a good spot. The thing I hate about playing solid early is that there are 6/10 monkeys looking to gamble and blow off all their chips, so if you take the solid approach, you just kind of let the monkeys give other people chips. That doesn't make much sense, but I had that idea today and it's right.


So I played pretty solid until two breaks in when I had around 11K in chips with 4/800 blinds. A pretty good player raised in mid position and I shipped it in with 99. He reluctantly called and showed AQ when I destroyed the 9 4 3 flop. I was able to open up a few more pots and get up to about 27k when I raised UTG+2 with KK to 3200 with 6/1200 blinds. The big blind shipped me in and had me covered, I quickly called and he showed AK. I was up to around 60k. Then nothing very spectacular happened except winning some blinds and hanging right around that mark. With blinds at 1k/2k, I raised to 5k on the button with AK when the BB shoved in and I snap called. He showed A7 and it wasn't long until he boated up on the 7 4 4 7 x flop. I was basically crippled now as blinds soon moved up to 1.5k/3k with a 500 ante and I had around 24k. I was able to double up when I picked up JJ and reshoved my chip tree who called with 5 5. I call this player the chip tree because he was unfortunate to pretty much be holding under me with big hands all day long. It kind of sucks for him because he played pretty decent all day and had a monster stack. The next hand was crucial when I picked up AA and the chip tree raised under the gun to 8k with 1.5/3k blinds 500 ante. I had about 65k at this point and was in the small blind. He was opening lots of pots and never really got a strong vibe from him until this hand. I can't even explain it and it is just a big cooler in a lot of ways, but I shipped all my chips in for an extremely large raise. He called with AK suited and I had an easy Q 8 2 2 board to lock it up. The very next hand I completed the harvest of the chip tree when I raised with Ac9c on the button and he put the rest in with A8 again being just a little worse. Then I tried to open more pots, but didn't really get many hands for a while and when I did open it cost me 11k to raise and 12k to continuation bet and with 140k in chips or so, that's a decent percentage of your stack. I'm really upset because I felt like I had played very well and patiently all day long. When the blinds and antes moved up to 3k/6k with a 1k ante, everything was just taken out of my hands in a lot of ways. I raised to 16k on the SB with A4 and got pushed all in and I folded. I was down to about 80K at this point and picked up 33 on the button. I really don't know the answer to this hand. I raised to 16k here and the same guy pushed in again from the SB. I easily could have shoved here with the M being 4 and all and only having a little over 13BB, but I had the thought in my head that raising would open up his range to wider than calling. In essence, he might think he could resteal lighter this time and I would obviously be racing but have a chance for a big double up. It's probably a bad play, but I wonder what everyone else thinks. The guy showed JJ and I lost.


Anyway I'm not too upset because I felt like I played very solid and confident for the whole day, but just very unsure on the last hand.