Venetian Day 2 (final day) $600 Ultimate Stack Tournament

4 players left. Payout is:
1st = $121,000
2nd = $81,000
3rd = $60,000
4th = $45,000

It is about 3:45am I have been playing poker 9 days out of ten and am exhausted. I am on medication that makes me dizzy (but I have to take it to avoid going to the emergency room if my own medical intervention fails). I have to use the bathroom badly on top of not thinking straight and we are about 30 minutes to the break.

I am hazy on how many chips everybody has. This is partly because we are dealing with 100,000 and 25,000 chips and I have little experience with this ratio.

But my best guess is I have ~13,000,000 OTB.

The SB has about 25,000,000, he is a bully but I am not afraid of him. Previously I had shoved ~20 blinds with AKs with 5 or 6 players left because two players were very short and I didn't want to play it out of position or to call a shove. SB called with ATo (when he was the BB) and I held.

The BB is the chip leader and likes to call and then float. In the BB he likes to call the flop bet and then bet the river if the turn is checked through. He will also donk the turn. He has been accumulating chips all night. I've played with him now for quite a while at two or three tables. I have no idea how many chips he has because he has built a huge wall (three stories at least that extends across the table). If I had to guess I would go with about half the chips or more.

UTG/CO is a WPT champion. He has ~2,000,000 chips.

Blinds are 400,000/800,000 w/ BB ante of 400,000. It could be more like 500,000/1,000,000. I am foggy on this. But I know WPT has about 2 bigs.

WPT champ shoves.

I have A9s OTB and decide to call.

My thinking is that I don't want to run into AJ+/TT+ when I shove and lose while somehow WPT survives. My other thought at the time is that maybe I get to see 5 cards with my hand if I do it this way anyway. All of this is conjecture because it is entirely possible I wasn't thinking at all and just hoping to draw in the other guys on the call.

I keep saying I play to win here on 2+2 but it turns out I'm playing to eliminate WPT and then playing to win. This is a stratosphere I have approached only once before and when I cash it will be for the most I have won in any tournament.

Should I have shoved? Interestingly after the tourney WPT comes up to me and tells me I should have shoved in order to win his chips and not let the others into the pot which he says is bad for my chances to win the tourney.

Im definitely shoving. If someone has a good enough hand to call your shove then chances are the WPT champ is gonna lose anyway and you’ll get 3rd. If they don’t have a hand that can call you, then you’re obv ahead of WPT’s range and you’re better off playing him headsup. You only have 15-20bbs.

By calling, you’re giving sb or bb the opportunity to shove you off your hand with KQ/33 type hands, or giving them great odds to call with hands like 78/J8etc that you’re ahead of but that have plenty of equity against you.

I was thinking that we want to flat to induce sb and bb calls and increase the % of knocking him out. And no one is really incentivized to bluff or deny equity postflop.

But the more I think about it, the chip leader in the bb doesn't really care about a pay jump and is possibly incentivized to delay it as much as possible because of the ICM pressure you and especially the 2nd stack are in.

I am flatting here, for sure. If someone else wants to isolate him, that is fine, I'll take my EV from that, and just fold. Perhaps I am a nit/ICM whore, but so be it.

Congratulations on your top 4 finish, MrRick! (A little Twitter research shows you were 3d, well done)

This could easily have been true. I was fortunate it wasn't or rather that the BB didn't have a real hand.

The BB hadn't 3-bet basically all day. He was calling a lot of raises in position. And a few out of position. So I guess it didn't occur to me that he might 3-bet to potentially prolong the match. But again I wasn't thinking too much either...

His goal ultimately was to chop at the earliest time (which is not something I knew at the time). So I was very lucky that he wanted to expedite the elimination of the very short stack. BB called with 85o and ultimately won the hand with 2 pair.

Before the flop the BB checked in the dark which gave me the emphatic indication that he wanted to eliminate the short stack. I missed the 875 flop entirely except for a possible gutter. On the turn BB led with a significant bet and I folded.

BB won the hand against a single pair of 7's.

Thanks.

It was a strange final table in that there was almost always two short stacks. I was fairly card dead so it didn't matter that much but the guy to my left liked to play a lot of hands and ultimately lost his 2nd place status due to the volatility and the CL propensity to call in position virtually all the time.

I was originally going to put this in the Bubblebust thread about always coming close (as a don't quit 5 seconds before the miracle post) but I was curious about how badly I played this hand in terms of hurting my chances to win.

Until I was in about 15th place I had been all in (or virtually all-in) five times over the two days. The chances of survival to that point was about 30%. One of all-ins was a flip (AK vs 77). Then it unraveled as I got it in bad (A4s vs QQ with 14 blinds) and survived. I also got it in good twice for significant double ups but only at 70% each time. At 5th place my AQo ran into AKs SB vs BB and again I got lucky to survive. By the time we were four way my total chances of survival was down to 1.5%.

The ultimate irony was that I refused a deal because the 2nd place guy wanted me to take $2,000 less than what the Venetian calculated as the chop. So taking a page from Greg Raymer's book I refused the unfavorable deal and proceeded to lose the next hand where I was in the BB with AQs vs ATo (2nd place guy who raised and then called my 10bb shove). Lol. I wasn't even upset because I knew I had been lucky to get there. And I had been able to use the bathroom while the Venetian was calculating the chop.

I think I played good for the most part, in large part due to the posts of all of you. Forcing me to think carefully about opponent's bet sizing, opposing ranges, GTO play from younger guys, making uncomfortable calls, what would a solver say?, etc. I also wore a pair of new Blue Shark poker glasses prior to most flops, turns and rivers in order to pick up tells by not looking at the cards but focusing on other players in the hand. Lol again (I didn't pick up tells - mostly). But I did find out that there were players not wearing glasses that were doing the same thing! So I felt glad that any time my pupils dilated within my blue eyes, I was not giving off that tell.

Also a special thanks to JKPoker who inspired me to go to Vegas in the first place with his posts of recent tourneys there.

Congrats!

Nothing in poker is better than a deep run in a MTT. I'm coming out in October for the WSOP & others for a week.

I am wrong that the 2nd place guy is a total idiot for insisting that you take less than ICM? Would it all go to him or would they split it up between 1st and 2nd?

He is the one who gets punished the most by ICM in this 3 handed scenario. Where the big stack has over half of the total chips and 2nd only has twice as many chips as 3rd. Especially considering the big stack is on his direct left.

It would all go to him.

He was demanding to get more than 2nd place money. He was setting his own price and tried to convince me to do it. Both the chip leader and I would have taken the agreed chop money.

I was happy to play it out though.

What was the ICM split, compared to the payout? Im guessing the chip leader is getting a bit less than 1st and you benefit the most, compared to 3rd. And 2nd was getting about the same, maybe a little less.

Maybe the 2nd place player thought the chip leader was a weak player who wouldn't properly punish him, by the sounds of him that may be true. But your stack is still very valuable and shouldn't be giving anything away to the 2nd place stack.

I don't remember the exact split but I was going to get ~$70,000 and chip leader something like $112,000 to $113,000. So 2nd place guy was going to get a little less than 2nd place payout. And he wanted to get paid more than the 2nd place payout.

This is an awesome and exciting post.

I like the call.

Congrats!!

@rick congrats on such an awesome result mate, hugely deserved with the work you put in

You have 13mill here so what a tad over 15bbs? Yea not shoving here in my opinion is really bad. You really don’t want sb and bb to peel here which they will probably do bc live players aren’t going crazy light here. You are crushing a 2bb most likely ATC range here. Flatting is really bad here and it seems like you are going to fold to a 3bet which good players can do really light here. What if sb or bb rips 44 or 55 here and you fold? It’s a massive spew of chips when you are short.

Just jam pre here and say oppps bad luck if you somehow lose and finish 4th which seems it would be very rare.

I feel flatting here and letting sb or bb/ maybe both realize their equity is a really big mistake here. You have 15bbs 4 handed. Don’t think you are doing anything wrong here if you rip. If you run into a better hand, that’s late stage mtt for you. If someone has say 50bbs, and 2nd and 3rd had the 15 bbs- sure maybe I would be fine here doing that but not as explained.

Nice score btw!

Also your rationale on jamming 20bb with AKs is kinda funny. I see nothing wrong with opening 2x and playing poker. I feel live players need to be less scared to play certain hands. I feel ripping AKs is such a punt of value with a great hand. Think you can comfortably open the hand to 2x and pile over a 3bet or call of to a 3bet rip. Sure jamming is ok sometimes, I think min opening and getting a light bb defend is much preferred vs jamming and find all folds to win a small pot.

Btw, gotta be honest. I like how you didn’t accept the deal where you would get 2k less. Never take a bad deal unless the money is very important to you. Someone wanting you to take $2k less than actual icm is comical. Don’t be a sucker. When everyone is 20-35bb deep, the skill edges aren’t super huge so I feel giving up 2k would be really bad. Always act firm in these deals. I may be wrong but I feel if you just stand firm here... sometimes people will just say ok and go with the icm #s and chop. Also sorry to see you lose AQ<A10. Not going to lie.... that’s really gross when you are talking changes between top3 money. Great run mr rick!!!!