Venetian Deepstacks

I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about the Venetian Deep Stack tournaments this summer, so I figured I’d check one out this week. Unfortunately it did not leave that positive of an impression on me.

I remember complaints about long registration lines from last summer, so I wasn’t surprised to see a line winding its way around the escalators, through slot machines, and ultimately ending somewhere around the Palazzo. I don’t mind waiting in line, but this was simply ridiculous…hundreds of players were being filtered through two registration stations. The rest of my day was probably more than a bit tainted by the insta-tilt ridiculous lines induce in me. The line was still huge well into the second level.

I was more than a bit surprised that the blinds started off at 50-100. While 150 big blinds is a good starting stack, I feel like the term “deepstack” is a bit of a misnomer. In 40 minutes a starting stack will be 100bbs…if you’re “deep” it’s not for very long. Maybe it’s the cash game player in me coming out, but I think the tournament actually plays quite fast once you are a couple levels in. Not to mention that you start with 14k in big chips and then 8 black 100s and 8 green 25s, so the pots are really big from the get-go as players bet whats in front of them.

To top it off, I was sitting next to the rail outside the poker room, not far from the restrooms. There was a constant throng of smokers either walking by or just hanging out next to an ashtray within spitting distance of my seat. There’s a reason why poker rooms banned smoking…at times I was covering my face with my shirt just to have some kind of filter.

Anyway, even though there’s a lot of value on 500 bucks if you win, I’m not sure I’ll be returning.