Deep stacks limit

It's been a long time since I last subjected myself to one of the PokerStars deep stack tournaments. My first experience was with the Friday limit hold'em version, maybe six months ago. I got into it spur of the moment -- clearly a mistake given how long these things can last -- and seven and a half hours later I busted out in something like 27th. Along the way I seriously considered suicide several times. I think limit hold'em is a horrible tournament game. I theorized that the larger starting stacks and longer levels would allow for skill to play a much larger part. Perhaps they do, but limit hold'em still sucks as a tournament game.

So, why would I want to repeat this nightmare? Beats me, but I did. Tonight I rushed home from work, casting aside the opportunity to drink fancy $12 martinis at some trendy bar with my co-workers, and signed up for the deep stack limit hold'em tournament. (Sorry to digress, but I just have to say that a martini is made with gin, dry vermouth, ice, and an olive, though I prefer mine with a twist. Expensive vodka mixed with Cointreau or Kahlua or Peach Schnapps -- Peach Schnapps? -- does not magically become a martini just because you pour it into a martini glass. A chocolate martini? Give me a break. Call me old school, but I like the martini of Hawkeye Pierce. Gin poured over cracked ice, gently swirled, then strained into an iced glass while the bartender quietly whispers the word "vermouth" under his breath. That is a martini.)

I should have gone for the foo-foo martinis. What a colossal waste of time! I've never played at one table with so many slow, lucky donkeys. At the first break one idiot had a VP$IP of 80%. I don't think I've ever seen one person get so consistently lucky. The table VP$IP was over 40%. Frequently there would be six people seeing the flop following a capped pre-flop betting round. I seriously haven't seen play like this since I hit up the beginners tables at Party. Several times the suckouts were so bad I had to sit out and just walk away. I took a 20-minute dinner break right in the middle of play because of the suckouts and just generally horrible play. Shortly after the second break, the 80% idiot, who had built his T5000 starting stack to over T12,000 at one point, busted out. So the donkey play caught up with him, but not before he ruined the chances of a number of decent players to get somewhere in this tournament.

I made it past the fourth break, but busted shortly thereafter, in 70th-something place. Considering how few hands I won it wasn't a bad finish. Well out of the money though.

One of the benefits of these deep stack, long level tournaments is that you get to spend more time observing the play of the opponents at your first table. This is especially so with limit since it's virtually impossible for anyone to bust out in the first hour. One of the drawbacks of these deep stack, long level tournaments is that you get to spend more time observing the play of the opponents at your first table. And when they're fools who aren't paying any attention to the game and are constantly timing out, a few days taking advantage of the accomodations in Gitmo start to look good in comparison. I don't think my table played any more hands per 30-minute level than are normally played in an average 10-minute SnG level.

This whole thing starts to remind me of my relationship with Sears. When I first got out of college and moved to California, I went to Sears, where America shops, to buy a refrigerator for my new apartment. Sears had given me a credit card with a whopping $50 limit when I was still in college with no job, so I reasoned now that I was making infinitely more money than I was when they gave me the card, it would be logical to expect them to increase my credit limit to, say, $350, so I could charge a refrigerator. I won't bore you with all the fine details, but suffice it to say that after two weeks of making do with an ice chest in my apartment, Sears and I parted company without having consummated a deal on a refrigerator. (And they managed to screw up application of the payment I made closing out my account, so months later I get a call asking why I haven't paid the bill. They never did remove all the accumulated interest charges.) I swore I would never shop at Sears again.

Yet, every decade or so I seem compelled to re-experience the pain of shopping at Sears, just to remind myself why I hate Sears and will never shop there. I did it when I decided Sears would be a good place to buy a new vacuum cleaner and waited a full 90 minutes for a manager to come and authorize my check (which they would have accepted without question if I hadn't been honest and told them I had recently moved and not gotten new checks yet). And then I waited another 30 minutes for them to locate the thing in the warehouse.

So I'll probably subject myself to the torture of deep stacks limit hold'em again in another six months. Unless, just maybe, I've learned my lesson for good this time. Yeah, right.

I feel much better now that I've vented.