Venetian 6/4 $330 NLHE DSII TR (Cliff Notes version)

[52s]

Well, I figured I'd throw up a trip report with some quick thoughts about the tournament and other stuff at the V. Since I'm not a fan of TR's with tons of poker hands (auto-skim for me) and there wasn't much debauchery to be had except the per usual advances of the ladies of the night, I'm going straight to the cliff notes - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Good
- The tournament staff did an excellent job herding in the long line trying to register in the morning, and then in handling the insertion of the alternates until every last one got into the tournament. There were 47 tables (470 runners) plus 111(!) alternates for a total of 589 players, and they got them in with relative ease, and actually got on the mic and apologized for slight delays. Excellent job.

- I found out from a little birdy over there that with the opening of the Palazzo will come an underground parking lot designed to have an entrance come into the sports book area, and thus the poker room itself. Supposedly it was part of the "grand plan" or whatever to have the poker room placed where it is with the Palazzo and what they were doing with that in mind. So that *should* hopefully resolve parking issues if its indeed true, but I'll wait and see.

The Bad
- The chip-color scheme. Not good. The 100s (black) and 500s (purple) are almost indistinguishable when trying to eye-ball them from afar; the same goes for the 1000s (yellowish-orange) and 5000s (red). When I had some reds, in the order of fairness, I had to place them on top of the blacks in order for them to stand out otherwise they'd get lost in the 500s or 1000s stack(s). The 10000s were of no help either when intermingled with the 1000s as those were brown. One of the problems with the chips is they all have alot of white trimming on the sides of the chip (color/white/color/white, etc.), and the color gets lost in that. My solution to the problem would be to have chips with bolder colors, eliminate the white trim, and (obv) make the chip-color scheme alternate from one side of the spectrum to the other (green to bright orange to blue to red to black, etc.) in order for the denoms to stand out.

- The lack of a definitive table-breaking order or plan. The floor seemed to be literally breaking tables at random. At some point after the first break I heard a cash game being called for Table #21 (front of the room), then they broke some tables in the back corner by the entrance from outside to set up the final table(s) from the previous day, and then I guess they did the rail, and then it pinballed all over the place. At one point I saw two floor talking to each other, looking around the room, and then one pointing at a table and saying "we'll break that one next". I'm not saying there should be a sheet or board out for all the players to see, but have some kind of plan written down before the day starts and go with it.

The Ugly
- I ran into photoc and shot the [censored] for a couple minutes.

- During dinner break I perused the room and there was some 5/10NL going as well as two 15/30 LHE tables. photoc let me know that he was in the room the evening or two prior and they had upto 6 5/10NL games then. No idea on the rest of the cash action. Didn't see any HU challenges or flipping for rolls going on in the back area, was disappointed.

- I cashed?!?!?!?

That's that. Enjoy the singing of Rick Astley, he still has the pipes.

[swede554]

good TR. i played in this tourney too, ended up busting in level 5 AQ<JJ being kind of short. playing in tommorow's $330 as well so hopefully that will go better. played the 15-30 afterwards for awhile, its been a good game last few days, lots of weak spots.

[ShadowBJ21]

Can you register the day before? Are there special times for registering or can you register anytime at the pokerroom?

Thanks
Shadow

[xx44]

[ QUOTE ]
Can you register the day before? Are there special times for registering or can you register anytime at the pokerroom?

Thanks
Shadow

[/ QUOTE ]

[52s]

You can register for events the day before starting at 5PM local time upto 2am, then they shut it down until 9 in the morning day-of-tourney. I highly recommend just going in the day before and doing it. Takes all of 2-3 minutes if you have your player's card already (need one of those as well, they'll point you to where you go and sign up for one if you need it).

I'll be playing tomorrow's $540. I need more starting chippies.

[jfletcher]

Can you tell us a little about the blind structure? It's called a deep stack, but is it really?

How many starting chips? How long were the rounds? Etc.?

[pig4bill]

I'm so ticked I missed this tourney. I even had the buy-in lammers from a satellite win. I flat-out forgot about it the next morning. Then somebody mentioned it while I was standing in line at the Rio at 1 pm and I did the V8 forehead smack.

[52s]

[ QUOTE ]
Can you tell us a little about the blind structure? It's called a deep stack, but is it really?

How many starting chips? How long were the rounds? Etc.?

[/ QUOTE ]

For the 330 they had the following:

6000 starting chips, 40 min. lvls

25-50
50-100
100-200
100-200/25
200-400/25
300-600/50
400-800/75
600-1200/100
800-1600/200
1000-2000/300
1500-3000/500
2000-4000/500
3000-6000/1000 (???)

That's about as far as I remember off the top of my head. I know the 500 color-up came somewhere around the last 2 lvls I listed.

The 330 with 6000 chips is "deep" in the fist 2:40, but if you haven't at least doubled-up the starting stack by the 200-400/25 it's pretty much time to get thinking about gambling and putting a good chunk of your stack into play on a hand you wanna go with.

I don't know how long the rounds are for the 540/10k starting chips, but I think the structure is the same, just with 1 hr. rounds. 540 is what I played at DS-I and that's how it was - supposedly the rounds are now 40 min. instead to avoid the tournies going super-long (although they did put in the "2am or final table" measure to counteract that), someone who's played one of the first couple 540s can chime in.

[GoldenBears]

I plan on playing in this tourney and the 540 when I'm there... they start at noon, right? What time should I get there by to guarantee myself a seat? Do they have satellites running, and if so do they run the day before? How long is the wait for the 5-10 NL game... would I be able to get there at 10am, register for the tourney, play 2 hours of 5-10 NL and then play the tourney, or would I end up waiting the entire time?

Thanks, this is very helpful,

Galen

[swede554]

[ QUOTE ]
I plan on playing in this tourney and the 540 when I'm there... they start at noon, right? What time should I get there by to guarantee myself a seat? Do they have satellites running, and if so do they run the day before? How long is the wait for the 5-10 NL game... would I be able to get there at 10am, register for the tourney, play 2 hours of 5-10 NL and then play the tourney, or would I end up waiting the entire time?

Thanks, this is very helpful,

Galen

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, the tourneys start at noon. I forgot to register for today's tourney yesterday, but got to the Venetian at 11am this morning and it took about 5 min to register so not bad at all. Any later than that though and the wait time increases.