Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza II Is Big WinnerMore than $4 million Has Been Won at Series This Month |
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Down on the Strip, on a property made to look like an ancient Italian city, hundreds of poker players a day are trying their hands in a tournament series that is generating millions of dollars in prize money and plenty of buzz during this summer of poker in Las Vegas.
The Venetian Deep Stacks Extravaganza II (DSE II), which started June 1, has already generated a prize pool of $4.4 million through 21 events of which the buy-ins are all $330, $540, and $1,060. And with the Venetian running a series of single-table satellites that start at $80, the tournament fields have been huge. And that equals very lucrative prizes in tournaments with relatively low buy-ins.
"We find that players do like our events so much that they are now substituting playing the Venetian Deeps Stacks with other tournaments in town," says Kathy Raymond, the Venetian's poker room manager. "Players have responded extremely positively to our structure, our staff, our room, and it's been a tremendous success."
So far, tournament employees there have collected more than 9,300 entries, and there are still nine tournaments to go.
The satellites, which run from 5 p.m. to 11 a.m. the next day, award two players lammers that can be used to enter any tournament or satellite, so players could conceivably get into the $1,000 event by starting in the $80 sats and working up through the $130 and $240 ones.
The Venetian DSE II is one of four tournaments series going on in Vegas right now. The World Series of Poker takes place until July 17, the World Poker Tour's Bellagio Cup III ends July 15, and Binion's Poker Classic ends July 7.
The WSOP, of course, is the sun that all other tournaments rotate around this summer. Thousands and thousands of players and poker fans schedule trips to Vegas around the WSOP, and the Venetian decided to offer players something that wasn't offered anywhere else.
"We never really went into this looking at it to be direct competition with the WSOP. We always positioned ourselves as a complement," Raymond says.
Only Binion's compares to the DSE II in terms of cost of buy-ins (it actually only had one tournament schedule with a buy-in more than $200), and it, too, has been consistently attracting 300 or more players, at least in its no-limit events. But Binion's schedule is full of non-hold'em events. Those tournaments are still bringing in almost 200 players each, but the prize pools generated at the Venetian dominate even the no-limit events.
Just check these stats out: The $540 event that took place June 16, had 505 players and the winner, Dale Richards, won $75,536; the $330 event on June 20 had 589 entries and the winner, Stuart Taylor, won $52,860; the $500 event that took place June 7, had 562 entries, and the winner, Stan Zielinski, won $84,061. The $1,000 event that took place a day later attracted 372 entrants and the winner, Brent Roberts, won $111,282.
Raymond is thrilled at the turnout, and lays the success of the tournament directly at the feet of her staff. She knows that, with the competitive Las Vegas poker landscape, her room needs to stand out to her customers. Food and drink service, a special parking pass that's available to regulars, general staff friendliness, poker room rates, etc., give reasons for players to return.
The DSE II is a great time to highlight the Venetian's poker room, says Raymond.
"We're looking at this not as a stand-alone event. We're looking at this as a player's introduction to the Venetian poker room," Raymond says.
The Venetian's poker room opened as part of the poker room explosion that took place in Las Vegas during the past several years. Casinos went from viewing poker as an afterthought to opening rooms everywhere and renting billboards along the interstate bragging about them. The Venetian is one of the properties in the city that made its poker room a focus of the casino.
The DSE II runs for another week. The full schedule is here.
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