August 14, 2026 -- Facing the big big stack at Venetian

Clayton Fletcher (@claytoncomic) reviews a hand from a one-day turbo played at The Venetian Las Vegas back in June.

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Transcript

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Welcome. Welcome to the poker.

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Welcome to the Tournament Poker Edge Podcast. Brought to you by Tournament Poker Edge.com, the only podcast dedicated exclusively to poker tournament strategy. I'm here with your host, Clayton Fletcher.

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Hello, once again, everybody, and welcome to the Tournament Poker Edge Podcast, sponsored by DACA Coaching, where you can receive a seven-day free trial and 20% off of your membership by using the promo code TPE. My name is Clayton Fletcher, and I am in balmy, unpretentious Seven Hills, Ohio. Happy as always to be bringing you yet another episode of the world's longest running poker strategy podcast. Yes, I am in the Midwest of these United States, visiting some family and of course visiting the Jack as well. The Jack is the local casino here. It seems like I always end up in Ohio right before the big MSPT event comes to town. So everybody is getting ready for that. They're having satellites for these big tournaments that they're going to be having here next week. But for now, there's just a lot of hyper-aggressive PLO cash games. They run 5-5. There's usually a straddle, but not always. They do bomb pots. It's like a whole thing out here in Ohio. You get a wild mixture of really bad players and a few really good ones. And I'm assuming that the really good ones are making a ton of money off of the really bad ones. I'm not sure I've ever been to a place where the disparity between the good players and the bad players was this pronounced. You guys are gonna say I'm crazy, but I don't think they have any average PLO players in Cleveland. At least not that I've seen. These guys really know what they're doing, or they don't have the first slightest clue. So, I mean, I'll I'll leave it up to you guys to let me know which uh side of the spectrum I happen to be on. But you know, I've been having fun there. I've been there a few times since I arrived here a couple days ago. The games have been pretty good. Uh, the players have been a little bit nicer than I remember them being last time around, a little bit more friendly to me as an outsider. Uh the dealers remain very unprofessional, kind of you know, ribbing the players, maybe talking about strategy. It just seems like everybody knows each other, and so the lines of professionalism aren't as distinctly demarcated, but be that as it may, it's always good to be back at the Jack. I also had some pretty serious online success this week. Thank you for those of you who tuned in very late the other night when I was still in Maryland visiting my family there, and I played on Club WPT Gold in their daily $33 mystery bounty tournament, and I got 12th place on Sunday night with like 7,100 players in there, and I twitched the last I don't know, couple of levels, not even that much, maybe last 15 minutes or so. Of course, when I started the stream, I didn't know I only had 15 minutes left in the game, but there were two tables remaining in the tournament, and it was kind of getting exciting. Although by that time, all of the important big mystery bounties had been claimed by my opponents. I did manage to claim a $350 mystery bounty as well as a free ticket into the gold million, which is happening this Sunday. It's a tournament I've never played in before. I'm excited to try it out for free for the first time this weekend. Uh, I also collected something like 10 or 11 more bounty prizes, which were either the very lowest or the second lowest in the mystery bounty strata. This tournament has a $33 buy-in and on Sundays a $200,000 prize pool guaranteed. So it's a good time. I've actually had a decent amount of success recently in that particular mystery bounty tournament. I've made some pretty serious changes recently to my mystery bounty strategy due to working with Jocka Coaching. Most notably, I'm I'm limping more. Once the bounties are in play, it often makes sense to limp with your strong hands and some not so strong hands alike. You just kind of want to be in the mix when it's time to make a decision on whether to collect a bounty or not. And because some players get so aggressive in trying to, you know, go bounty hunting or whatever you want to call it, it's good to have some pretty strong limps in there, maybe even aces or kings, hoping that somebody's going to raise over your limp to try to isolate the short stack so that they can try to collect a bounty, and then they find out the hard way that you were waiting in the weeds with your monster. So that's worked out a few times for me, as well as some other strategies that I'm learning on Jocka coaching. And I want you guys to get in on the fun as well. The videos are easy to follow and to understand, and the information that I'm getting from these excellent coaches on Jocka, I retain the information for more than five minutes after I watch the video, which to me is the sign of a good teacher and a good teaching format. I want you guys to give it a try. You can try it for free for seven days by using this link, jocca.poker slash TPE. And then after that seven days is up, if you're ready to buy, you'll save 20%, whether you get a monthly membership or an annual membership at jocka.poker slash TPE. All right, let's go back and look at the hand that we talked about in last week's strategy segment. And this time we'll use the solver and check my lines. Just make sure I'm not doing anything that is too far outside of the realm of game theory. So the blinds, this was again from the monster stack. This is the hand that we talked about at the end of last week's episode. So if you haven't listened to that, you might want to go back and check it out now. Anyway, the blinds were 300, 500, and 500, and I have 65,000 in my stack, so it's you know over a hundred big blinds early on in the tournament. Uh the action folds to me on the button. I've got ace eight off suit, and I raised it up to 1200, and the big blind called, so I can't imagine that the solver is going to take exception to me opening ace eight on the button in this spot. And of course, the solver also opens ace eight all the time, 100%. This is a pure open, and the solver also likes my sizing, by the way. 2.3 big blinds right there where it needs to be. So with 3200 in the pot, the flop comes King of Spades, 10 of Clubs, 4 of Hearts, and I have Ace 8, so a total whiff here. My opponent checks, and I bet 1k, which is two big blinds, and my opponent called. Now I remember saying last week I thought this flop would be so much better for my range than for the big blinds range that I thought this might even be what we call a range bet, which means no matter what two cards I have in this situation, I'm betting this flop 100% of the time. It turns out we bet this flop 98% of the time, and I have one of the few hands that doesn't 100% pure bet it. We do bet it 95% of the time with my exact hand ace eight offsuit, and we check 5%. But yeah, this flop calls for what is almost a pure range bet here as well. Okay, so now there's 5200 in the middle, and the turn comes the ten of spades pairing the board and bringing that backdoor spade flush draw. I do have the eight of spades in my hand for what it's worth, which I don't think is very much. Maybe if I had that ace of spades, it might be more significant, but the eight of spades probably doesn't really change things too much. But my opponent checked on this 10 and I decided to check behind. Let's see what the solver says. Yeah, guys, the solver says that I should check with my hand 100% of the time on this turn. So good job, Clayton. Not continuing with another barrel when the middle card paired on 4th Street. It's a 100% pure check. And so there's still 5,200 in there. The river comes the deuce of clubs, final board king 10 410 deuce and the flush missed. And my opponent leads out for 1,000, which is a very, very small bet, of course, into 5,200. And I went for a raise here, guys. I made it 5,000, and my opponent folded. We actually are supposed to just call this silly little bet 94% of the time with our ace 8 offsuit, no pair. So that's a surprise, right? I mean, I didn't really expect calling this little bet to even be profitable. I mean, what is he supposed to be betting this small that's a bluff that I can beat with ace eight? It's very strange, but I think it just has to do with the unbelievably good pot odds. More than six to one we're getting on a call. Like you really hardly ever have to be right when you call with ace high and win it. But yeah, do we ever raise? Is the question. Turns out the solver approves the raise, but it's a very, very low frequency play. In fact, less than one percent of the time are we raising in this situation. So, although it's not a pure blunder, it's definitely not a big part of the strategy. Well, how could it be when we're calling 94%? But yeah, we should be folding about 5% of the time and calling almost always. All right, let's do a new hand. This one is going to be another hand that I played in the summer. One of the days I was there, I was just looking for something to do. I think maybe I had a day two to play the next day, and so I needed like a one-day tournament, and I found one. Actually, it was a $1,100, $1,100 seniors event at the Venetian with a $250,000 guaranteed prize pool. They got 671 players, guys, so over $600,000 in the prize pool. Not bad for a one-day tournament. At this point in the game, there were 270 players remaining with uh 100 paid. So I was, you know, kind of in the mix. I had an average stack. The blinds were 1k and 2k with a 2k big blind ante, and the average stack was 97,000, which is what I had. About 50 big blinds, M of around 20. And the player under the gun was a decent player of Asian descent, and he opens kind of big to 5,500. He's only got 60k in his stack. Now, you might say, wow, that's almost 3x, isn't that crazy? But when you play in seniors events, you will see things from another time happen quite often. Now, this player was decent compared with the rest of the competition that I was facing in this tournament. He would not be considered decent generally. So part of the fun of playing in a seniors event is you have access to a player pool in which the skill level is not as strong as what you're used to being up against when you pay eleven hundred dollars to play in a tournament. All that to say it wasn't that uncommon to see a huge 3x open off of a 30 big blind stack. So this guy's already put almost 10% of his chips in there, and now the action folds all the way around to Clayton. In the small blind, I've got the ace of clubs jack of clubs, and I think that folding is a bit too nitty, but I really didn't want a three-bet because the raise came from under the gun, and I thought this guy was you know fairly solid, like a decent player, at least pre-flop. I don't know, guys. Maybe I should just fold. I don't really like calling. I definitely don't like three-betting, but I did make the call. My hand was just too pretty to throw into the muck. So I called from the small blind, and the big blind is probably one of the chip leaders in the whole tournament. He's a very large man, and he's got a very large stack of over 250,000. When again, the average is only 97k. So not a player that I necessarily had a ton of respect for, but definitely somebody calling and trying to get there and hoping that he hits his magic card, and then doing so, and then winning a little pot here and there, and getting way too many lucky cards to be sustainable. So, not someone that I was intimidated by, but he calls as well. So now three of us are going to see a flop. 18,500 in the middle. The flop comes King of Hearts, Jack of Diamonds, Ten of Spades. So King Jack 10 Rainbow, and I again have the ace jack of clubs, so middle pair and a gut shot and an ace kicker. I check, and the big blind checks as well, and the under the gun player checks behind. So I started to think, hey, is my pair of jacks good here? Let's see. So the pot is still 18,500 heading to the turn, which is the king of diamonds pairing the board. And at that point, I was basically sure that I had the best hand, right? I mean, you're telling me somebody had a king on the flop and he didn't bet it. The only player that's even possibly true of would be the big blind. And you know, we could pretty much rule that out because he can have just about anything. The fact that he called 3,500 more does not mean he necessarily has a monster. So I wasn't too worried about being behind right now. So I led on the turn, I bet 7,000 into the 18,500 pot. So about 40% ish right there by me and the big blind, the big guy called, and then the original Razor, the Asian player, folded, leaving me heads up against one of the tournament chip leaders. And now with 32,500 in the middle, the river comes the four of diamonds. So our final board is King of Hearts, Jack of Diamonds, Ten of Spades, King of Diamonds, Four of Diamonds, King Jack, 10, King Four with three diamonds. So the backdoor flush did get there, and I've got the ace jack of clubs, a pair of jacks with an ace kicker, and the action is on me. I'm in the small blind, so I'm first to act. And I decided to go for a little bit of a value bet that's also kind of a blocking bet. Like I thought my opponent might be afraid to raise, even if he did have a king. I mean, I thought in all likelihood I was good. I'm hoping he has something like Queen Jack, right? So I can have him out kicked. Maybe he's got a 10 somehow, whatever. You know, there are so many hands that I can still beat on this river. I felt like I had a value bet, but I wanted to do a sizing that would also serve as a defensive bet as well, because maybe my opponent will fear that I have a flush or something. So I bet 8,500, so about a quarter of the pot. There's 325 in the middle, and my opponent called rather quickly. I proudly turned over my ace of clubs, jack of clubs, and he even more proudly showed the eight of diamonds, five of diamonds. So he did, in fact, go runner runner, an eight high flush. And even when he did, because his flush was so low and because the board was paired, he didn't want to raise my dinky river bet. And this little tournament ended up being one of many near misses for me this summer. I soft bubbled, I guess you could say. I finished about 25 places off the money, which uh happened quite a few times throughout the course of what proved to be a very difficult summer. And that'll do it for this episode. Hope you guys enjoyed it. Do us a favor and subscribe to the YouTube channel. My name on YouTube is at Clayton Comic. It really helps out a lot. Even if you know you don't want to watch the videos, just become a subscriber and help me get the numbers up. That would really mean a lot. And for everyone here at Tournament Poker Edge, with special thanks as always to our very general sponsor, jocka.poker slash cookie. Tournament towards Clayton Fledgeworth, thank you so much.