Venice

I’ve been to Italy before, and loved it. Rome, Gaeta, and San Remo are all wonderful cities, but the Italian city that I’ve wanted to see since I was a child is Venice. So, I was thrilled to get a call from my good friend Max Pescatori, inviting me to be a guest of the company he now represents (Poker Digitale) in a new Italian poker league they are starting, which would kick off in Venice.

It couldn’t have worked out better had I been allowed to plan it myself. You see, I was going to be in Europe anyway, first Cyprus and then London for the World Series of Poker Europe. My problem (if you can call this a problem) was that I had a 10-day window in between the two tournaments that I needed to fill. Bingo! The timing of the Venice tournament fit in perfectly, enabling me to catch the final two events — H.O.R.S.E. and the main event.

If you aren’t familiar with Venice, it is a city that stretches across 118 small islands. The buildings are actually built on closely spaced wooden piles. Stone and/or brick buildings are built on platforms supported by the wooden piles, which hold the buildings dozens of feet above the seafloor. They then pass through the soft sand of the seafloor to the harder clay or rock bottom below the sand.

Many of these buildings are thousands of years old. This is possible because when submerged underwater, wood will petrify from lack of oxygen, and become as hard as stone. There are many traditional-type streets in Venice, but there are also many canals that are used for transportation. Old World-style gondolas can still be found here, as well as water taxis and a ferry-type bus system that is quite convenient.

There are no cars in Venice, making it the largest urban car-free zone in all of Europe. For €50, we were able to buy a pass that gave us unlimited use of the water buses for one week. It was quite a deal, and a nice way to see the city.

My buddy Max and Poker Digitale really came through for me. They set my wife and me up in a five-star hotel and even comped me into the main event. The casino is located in a spacious Renaissance-style palazzo in the Cannaregio district; it is three-stories high, with direct access to the Grand Canal available by gondolas. This palace was built in 1509, the same year that my dad graduated from high school. It was a great place to play, except that they didn’t let us use the elevators, and it was five flights of stairs to get to the poker room.

The €2,000 H.O.R.S.E. event drew 29 players, which doesn’t sound that great, but considering that it was the first H.O.R.S.E. event ever held in Italy, and €2,000 (approximately $3,000) ain’t exactly chicken feed, I’d say it wasn’t a bad turnout. The level of play wasn’t bad, either. A lot of these guys had never played some of the games, but all seemed to catch on pretty quickly.

I had amassed a lot of chips as we approached the end of day one, when I hit my first stumbling block. The game was stud eight-or-better, and it was three bets to me. I was the low card with the 2. I looked down to see the 4 3 in the hole. In a multiway pot, this is one of the best hands you can possibly have, so I made it four bets, and it got capped with four-way action.

Like clockwork, I caught an offsuit 9 and my three opponents all caught low cards. They put me in the middle, and I took the cap, as I still had not seen a single heart that wasn’t in my hand. On fifth street, something very interesting happened. I made open nines and all three of my opponents hit an ace, and inasmuch as a guy had passed an ace on third street, my nines were probably good for high. One guy was still drawing to a low, and they were putting plenty of pressure on him (and me).

Sixth street was like a dream come true. I hit the 6 , giving me a 6-low draw and a straight-flush draw to go with my pair of nines. No one could have better than a 7 low, so I knew I was drawing pure. I also still hadn’t seen a heart that wasn’t in my hand, and had seen only one 5. All of that was enough for me, as I went back on the offensive and capped this pot.

On the river, I caught a brick, as usual, but maybe my nines would hold up. I checked to the guy who had been capping it the whole way. His board was 2-7-A-6. He was in last position, so I check-raised, forcing the other two guys to call a double bet if they wanted to stay in. The first guy passed and the second guy went into the tank. It almost worked, but he finally called with the pair of tens that he made on the end. The first genius had a pair of sixes and a 7-6-5 low; I was so close to a scoop.

We switched to hold’em and I lost three hands in a row — all three times with the best hand. I now had five big bets left when they announced that this would be the final hand of the night. I looked down at pocket sixes, and raised. I was quickly three-bet by a tight player, but there was no turning back now. We put it all in, and he showed pocket nines.

The flop was nothing, 8 5 2. The turn was the Q, and the river brought the J. I had to do a double take to see that I had backdoored a flush and won the pot to stay alive. I was a short stack, but I’d be back to fight the next day!