No Lotus for Me!

On April 2, the Venetian, a high-end world-class resort on the Las Vegas Strip, opened an exceptionally luxurious 39-table poker room with a bang, throwing an extravagant party with the "Who's Who of Poker" in attendance, followed by a freeroll no-limit hold'em tournament in which the winner received a brand-new Lotus. While my Lotus days are long behind me, my daughter heard I was playing for the prize and had visions of looking real cool driving her brand-new Lotus to high school. So, I headed on down to have a look at the room and play.



The Venetian is making a bold move to be a major player in the lucrative Las Vegas poker market. It has dabbled in poker rooms in a small way before, but this time, it's going all out. The cardroom is one of the most comfortable and elegant I have ever been in – and that is saying something, as I've been in pretty much every first-class cardroom there is or has been in the past 30 years! It has large tables with plenty of room between them, comfortable chairs, first-rate ambience, and a good casino location. Plus, the casino is home to some of Las Vegas's biggest high rollers, some of whom are bound to totter into the poker room.



I think a critical element of the success of poker rooms is the experience of management. Kathy Raymond, the Venetian's director of poker operations, has 14 years of experience in management at one of the nation's most successful poker rooms – Foxwoods. Lee Vinocur, poker room manager, is a longtime Venetian employee and a poker player himself. Greg Grivas, evening shift manager, has worked for The Mirage and Bellagio, and I have known him for years. Beyond being smart and personable, he has an incredibly high level of integrity. (And the cocktail waitresses tell me he's a hottie, but I just don't see it!) These are the kinds of people poker needs, and the Venetian will be well-served by this crew, as will those of us who play there.



After some fine food, a few glasses of wine, and some stimulating conversation with the wealth of poker players attending the party, I headed down to the Play for the Lotus no-limit hold'em tournament.



In no-limit hold'em, and even more so in no-limit hold'em tournaments, your stack size and that of your opponent(s) is an important component in playmaking and determining the correct strategy. In no-limit, your implied odds change drastically depending on how much you can bet and get called. Another major variable is the propensity of your opponent(s) to call. In tournaments, either you or your opponent is often short-stacked, limiting the strategic plays you can make and forcing you to adjust your strategy based on your and your opponent's chip positions.



The tournament was fast-paced, with the antes and blinds going up every 20 minutes. It was midway through the tournament and I was plagued by a short stack of $8,400. The blinds were $600-$1,200 with a $100 ante. Pretty much everyone at my table was short-stacked, making every hand critical and every move a pursuit for survival. I was on the button, the field folded around to me, and I looked down to see the A 10. In previous hands, I had been raising from a first-in position somewhere between three and four times the size of the big blind. That thought was stuck in my head, and I threw seven $500 chips into the pot, making it $3,500 to go. Right after I raised, I knew I had not thought the situation through enough, and had made a mental error.



The reason is, the small blind had more than $10,000 in chips and had me covered, and the big blind had only around $6,000 in chips. A large part of determining your bet size in no-limit is thinking moves ahead and analyzing how the hand will play out in different scenarios. Will you be "pot stuck" into calling any future bets or can you get away from the hand should you get reraised? By pot stuck, I mean that you have bet so much as to make the pot so big or so important to win that you will be required to call all of your remaining chips should you get reraised preflop.



With $4,900 remaining, I couldn't fold if I was raised by either of the remaining players. With the A 10, I would have been about a 2-1 dog against K-K and about a 2.5-1 dog against A-K suited. True, I had only around a 13 percent chance of winning against A-A, but my holding one of the aces greatly reduced the chances of that hand being out. In that situation, many opponents would reraise from the blind against a button raise with any pair and a variety of holdings inferior to mine.



I would have the pot odds to call any reraise from either player. Given that I would have to call a reraise, shoving it all in would have been a significantly better play than the raise I made. Yeah, I don't like putting myself in a situation in which I am favored to go broke, but you have to take a lot of chances in tournaments to put yourself in a position to win – particularly fast-action tournaments such as this one.



For better or for worse, nobody played back at me; the small blind folded and the big blind, a fellow by the name of Gary, just called.



The flop came 3-2-2 rainbow. Gary checked to me. I thought about my holding and what Gary might hold. He knows me and has played with me, and knows I am capable of raising with a wide range of hands from the button. I thought that if he held a wired pair, he would have moved in preflop; the same with A-K and A-Q, and possibly A-J. The way the hand had played, I was pretty sure I held the best hand unless Gary was slow-playing a big hand or was holding A-J and didn't move in on me. I moved Gary all in for his few remaining chips. He called and flipped over A-J. I blanked the turn and the river, and the dealer pushed Gary the chips. That hand left me crippled.



Since I would have called my remaining chips to any preflop raise, I should have just shoved it all in before the flop. First of all, it would have increased my chances of winning the pot preflop without risking chips in a race. But most important, a preflop shove in would have prevented my opponent(s) from just calling the bet and then betting me off the hand on the flop either as a bluff or with a marginal hand, thus eliminating any chance for me to draw out on the turn and the river.



That said, while I made a grievous error, one that a player of my experience is not supposed to make, it turned out to have no real effect on the results. Even if I had moved all in preflop, Gary would have called my late-position raise with A-J and I still would have lost the amount of chips in his stack. But that fact does not mitigate the mistake I made. In poker, you must make the best decision over and over again, and let the scenarios play out as they will, knowing that in the long run, luck will be a neutral factor and you will prevail over those making inferior decisions.



The very next hand, I picked up K-K and quadrupled through. I was back in the tourney again! It is also important to realize that as long as you have chips, you can still win the tournament. Don't give up. Many a tournament has been won by a player who once had a crippled chip position. A chip and a chair, as they say. I built up quite a stack before moving it all in with second pair and a flush draw on the flop against top pair. I missed, and headed for the side action.



The Lotus was won by 32-year-old Beatrice Stranzinger, an Austrian professional poker player who moved to Las Vegas two years ago to play poker for a living. She's been doing quite well. So, guys, if you see a good-looking young blond girl driving a new yellow Lotus, you might want to think twice about asking her to your poker game! But you can probably find her where you'll find me playing some live action – at Kathy Raymond's place, one of the nicest poker rooms in the world!



Roy Cooke played winning professional poker for more than 16 years. He is a successful real estate broker/salesperson in Las Vegas. His books are available at http://www.conjelco.com/. His longtime collaborator, John Bond, is a freelance writer in South Florida.