Venetian Big Stack 2018
Kicking off in Sands Expo on May 26, 2018, was a pretty big deal for The Venetian Poker Room. We have worked hard for 12 years for the opportunity, and it was rewarding as we got the cards in the. View current DeepStack Extravaganza October 29–November 25, 2018 results and tournament structures. Suite Offers Book Your Stay. Menu Close Join Grazie Rewards. Members of Grazie Rewards always get the best suite rate, exclusive email offers along with special promotions for dining and shows. Spend a night or awhile at The Venetian Resort.
I was asked to write the foreward for the new book, Optimizing Ace King by James Sweeney and Adam Jones. I wanted to share here what I wrote, both because the book is excellent, and because it’s a fun story from a long time ago.
Sometime in 2003, I was at the Bellagio in Las Vegas playing limit hold’em when I heard the brush announce a new game – $10-$20 no-limit hold’em.
At that time, limit hold’em was still the dominant game. Chris Moneymaker had won the World Series of Poker a few months prior, and the poker boom was just beginning to get off the ground. No-limit cash games were still a curiosity, and $10-$20 felt like a pretty big game – at least it did to me at the time.
I wasn’t the only one, either. The floor liked to put the $10-$20 no-limit game at the table closest to the front of the room, right on the rail, where it could attract the most attention.
It seems silly today, but back then the big all-in pots were fascinating to us limit players. Here we were getting our money in $60 at a time, and one table over it was $1,000 bets.
At this particular game on this day, one player caught the attention. He wasn’t someone I’d ever seen play at the Bellagio before, and I likely would have remembered him. He was fairly tall, probably about 6’2’’. But he was absolutely enormous. Five hundred pounds. Maybe six. Just a huge man probably in his late 20s with dark brown hair and a scraggly brown beard. He was wearing what had to be a 4XL gray hoodie and camo cargo shorts.
He squatted in seat three at the end of the table closest to the door, straddling his turned-around chair. His friend, a relatively normal-sized and otherwise unremarkable man, sat in a chair behind him.
I was playing my game so I didn’t catch all the machinations, but the large man bought in for about $2,000 or so and started playing every hand. A pure gambler—probably from out of town, probably not used to playing much poker at these stakes.
As I said, a $10-$20 no-limit cash game was still a curiosity at the time, so it drew a bit of a crowd, and I popped over to watch now and then. Each time I came over, the fat man’s stack was a bit bigger. Messy stacks of orange $20 chips started turning into blacks and purples and stacks of bills.
Sometimes playing every hand pays off.
He was up to around $8,000 or so when I wandered over to watch again and by pure luck happened to catch all the action in this hand.
It folded to the fat man who was about four off the button. He opened to $200. The button and big blind called.
The flop came K 8 7. The blind checked, the fat man bet $500, the button called, and the big blind folded.
The turn was the A. The fat man bet $1,000. The button, a slender gray-haired, bespectacled, businessman-looking type playing at least $20,000 mostly in thick stacks of hundred dollar bills, moved one stack of orange chips forward and announced that he was all-in.
The fat man popped to his feet faster than I would have given him credit for and leaned with one knee on the seat of his chair. His friend got up too to get a better look at the action.
After a pregnant pause, the fat man picked up his cards and flashed them to his friend. The friend nodded, and the fat man whipped his hand face-up on the table bellowing, “I call.”
A K it was for seat three.
The fat man let out a bit of a whoop, while his opponent sat stone-faced at the other end of the table.
The dealer knocked the felt to indicate action was complete and that he was dealing the river. He burned and then carefully placed the river card on the board.
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Venetian Big Stack 2018
The businessman calmly tabled 10 9. The dealer pushed the three hearts forward and said, “Flush.”
The dealer mucked the A-K and then leaned over and started to count down the stack of the businessman. It was an unnecessary formality to count the stack, as it was plainly obvious from the businessman’s wads of bills that he had things covered.
But that dealer’s movement in the wrong direction gave seat three his opportunity. The large man grabbed two fistfuls of chips, the high denomination chips in one hand and a messy stack of orange in the other, and shoved them toward his friend. For a moment the friend looked bewildered, but in a second he grabbed the bottom of his T-shirt with both hands and lifted it to form a pouch that would hold poker chips. The fat man dumped both fists of chips into his friend’s shirt, and the friend took off running out the door.
The fat man stuck around a few more seconds to shove all the bills into his cargo pants and another two fistfuls of orange chips into the open pouch pocket of his hoodie. He too headed for the door of the poker room.
It wasn’t so much a run than a hurried waddle, but the movement jostled his hoodie enough that $20 chips dripped out periodically and rolled in chaotic spirals on the floor.
The friend had acted fast enough to get out the door and disappear, but by the time the fat man made it to the door, the floorperson working the podium had reacted and set himself up to impede escape.
But there was no stopping this man.
The businessman raised a hand in protest, but quickly withdrew it recognizing that the facts of the situation didn’t lend themselves to a traditional appeal.
The blubbery bandit was now well out the door, and he turned to the right, heading briskly past several hundred tourists lined up to buy tickets to the Cirque de Soleil show.
Half the poker room got up to watch this spectacle, of course, and we all saw him disappear behind several banks of slot machines and likely down the hall that lay beyond them.
That’s about it to the story. In two minutes we were back in our seats and playing again. The $10-$20 game took a few more minutes to sort things out, and then they too were underway again.
I don’t know for sure how it resolved. In the aftermath, the rumor about the room was that the friend made it out free and clear, but casino security tracked the fat man down and stopped him before he got out of the building.
The rumor also was that due to a legal peculiarity regarding the unenforceability of gambling debts, that security were not permitted to compel him to return the money. And so he settled things by handing over the $20 chips and accepting a permanent ban from the property, while keeping the cash.
I don’t know that there’s a moral to the story, but I guess it taught me one thing. A-K can be a damn good hand. But every once in a while the best way to play it is to hit the door and keep on running. ♠
Ed’s newest book, The Course: Serious Hold ‘Em Strategy For Smart Players is available now at his website edmillerpoker.com. You can also find original articles and instructional videos by Ed at the training site redchippoker.com.
As the eyes of the poker world shift across the county to South Florida for the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open, Las Vegas is recovering from a summer chock full of poker festivals. One of them was the Venetian’s DeepStack Championship Poker Series, which featured 150 events — including five MSPT Main Events — and awarded more than $31 million in guaranteed prize pools.
For the first time ever, the Venetian utilized the Sands Expo Center, which housed 103 poker tables (each with an automatic shuffler), a food court, lounge areas and a final table live stream set. It was there that players like Joseph Cheong, Pavel Plesuv and Anton Wigg all captured titles.
PokerNews recently caught up with Venetian Poker Room Manager Tommy LaRosa, who revealed that the series will return next year. We also got his thoughts on the summer and what they can do to improve moving forward.
LaRosa: 'Making sure we maintain our high level of professionalism from our dealers and floor staff is a top priority for me.'
Venetian Big Stack 2018 Results
PokerNews: In your opinion, what did the DeepStack Championship Poker Series do right this year?
LaRosa: Being away from the hustle and bustle of the casino floor was definitely a huge plus. Without a doubt, though, it was being able to offer larger guarantees on some of our key events, and being able to accommodate more players than ever before.
Understandably, no one wants to wait to play, and for the most part our alternate lines were shorter than in previous years. I also got a lot of positive feedback on the amount of space between tables and the fact that we had shuffle machines on every single table. Personally, I think having shuffle machines on every table was a pretty big deal. I don’t know of any other series, as large as ours, that has them.
What sort of things do you feel the DeepStack Championship Poker Series can do better next year?
The three biggest pieces of feedback I received were improving signage leading to Sands Expo, offering a wider variety of food options, and installing better table signage to assist our guests with finding their tables. All three are high on the list to improve for 2019, which should continue to elevate the player experience.
Venetian Big Stack 2018 Olympics
What sort of things do you feel you need to continue to do to bring players in, especially during the summer when there’s so much competition?
Simply put, value and comfort. Players want value for their money, with larger guaranteed prize pools. When you play for 10-12 hours a day, comfort is a real big deal. Having the space in Sands Expo this summer, we were able to offer nine-handed tournament tables and enough space between the tables to ensure nobody was bumped into or cramped while playing. The lighting was so nice and bright, that it made for a great playing experience.
This marked the first year you had a live stream broadcast. How did it all go?
For year one of streaming, I think it went well. We’ve never been able to offer this before. Without a doubt, though, I know we can improve not only the presentation but how many streamed events we can offer in 2019. I love being able to stream events for players so family and friends can watch from back home. That’s pretty cool to see recreational players get excited knowing their loved ones get to see them play at The Venetian Las Vegas.
What sort of lessons did you learn from this go around and what precipitated them?
So many, where do I start. Anytime you scale your size, you worry about your level of service. Making sure we maintain our high level of professionalism from our dealers and floor staff is a top priority for me. It takes a lot of training, coaching and communication to make sure everyone is on the same page. Being that this was the first year in Sands Expo, the poker team had a lot to get used to as well. Overall, I think everyone did a great job adjusting and being able to offer the type of service our players have come to expect at The Venetian Poker Room
LaRosa: 'Las Vegas Sands has made it loud and clear that we are doing everything we can to offer our players an experience that is second to none.'
What were some of the highlights/favorite memories from you this summer?
Kicking off in Sands Expo on May 26, 2018, was a pretty big deal for The Venetian Poker Room. We have worked hard for 12 years for the opportunity, and it was rewarding as we got the cards in the air that day.
How can I not mention the $1,100 MSPT event also? We set two records on that event – 1,872 players on Day 1D and 4,411 total players. It’s crazy to think that I needed more space than the 103 tables could provide. Believe me, I plan on beating those numbers next summer.
What sort of things would you like to introduce to next year’s series?
More food options, larger guarantees, and bigger fields. It’s exciting to work for a company that takes risks to be able to offer our players the best experience in the industry. With more than $31 million in guaranteed tournament prize pools this summer, Las Vegas Sands has made it loud and clear that we are doing everything we can to offer our players an experience that is second to none.
Anything you’d like to say about your dealers and staff? It seemed like they did an admirable job all summer long.
Our dealers and staff are some of the hardest working and best in the business. It isn’t easy to work 10 weeks, often six or seven days a week, maintaining the level of professionalism that our dealers and floor/support staff do. I’m really proud of everyone, and the hard work they put in to make The Venetian Poker Room the destination it is.
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VenetianPoker eventsPoker BusinessLas Vegas PokerLas VegasLas Vegas SandsTommy LaRosa