The Joe Hachem Deep Stack Series is all wrapped up after Daniel Botta took care of Sam Higgs to capture the $100,000 first prize with the beautiful 5♥ 2♥ all in on the flop against Higgs’ A♠ K♣ with the final board running out 7♦ 5♣ 10♣ 4♥ 3♠.

In a continuation from my re-cap of the ANZPT Adelaide here is the The Eight Points of Enlightenment: Joe Hachem Deep Stack Series.

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1 – Affordable: Following the Aussie Millions where events start at that four-figure mark, and Main Event’s around the country that fluctuate around that $3,000 mark; its good to have a Championship series that is truly affordable for the tournament junkie. With most buy-ins at the $230, $340 and $550 mark, players can take their shot at being crowned a Champion without it hurting the wallet too deeply.

2 – Tournament Structures (part one): The structures for these tournaments were excellent! The deep starting stacks and slow levels provided incredible value for money – and there can be no arguments; all you have to do is look at the vast improvements from last years structures. As for the buy-in amounts, you couldn’t ask anymore from the Jonno and the Crown staff as they catered for those that are looking to play some deep-stack tournament poker.

3 – Tournament Structures (part two): At some points the structures were too good with finishing times stretching into breakfast where pancakes were the order of the day instead of check-raises and open limping (which is definitely not smart at any point). This does support the argument for players and their need for adequate structures with maximum play – but on occasions this can be negative.

4 – PokerPro Problems: Most may be unaware of the persistent problems Crown have experienced with the PokerPro machines, and most recently it effected Event #5: $165 Poker Pro. With problems all tournament long, by the time they reached the final table they had no choice but to vacate the machines and play the tournament on actual felt. This totally changed the game as the time it took to get through hands doubled, and with the turbo-like structure the final table played faster then most on it would have liked.
If Crown wish to continue running Championship tournaments on the PokerPro machines – and I believe they should – then they really need to take a look at rectifying the existing problems.

5 – Lack of Chips: This really wasn’t a problem, but more of a funny scenario come flight two and three of the Main Event. With 17,960,000 chips in play, the majority of them were bagged during flight one meaning that the following two flights were left with physically less chips. Therefore the 25,000-denomination chips were out early so as to make sure that flight three had enough to play with – on a side note it was funny seeing people with two or three 25,000-chips and nothing else when trying to post a 1,600 big blind (me inclusive)!

6 – Repechage Main Event: Personally I’m not a fan of a repechage because it changes the way the game is played; but poker-wise I think it’s great. To allow people to rebuy if they bust on the first two days means that the prizepool will always be boosted, and be of excellent value to those that don’t repechage and those that do (as it gives them a second chance).
However only playing eight levels during the first two flights means that the numbers that returned for flight three were lower then they could have been. By playing ten levels and an extra 90 minutes means that day two will on average be shorter and that more people will bust and therefore repechage into flight three – consequently a greater prizepool with more money on offer.

7 – Half Million Dollar Prizepool: Well nearly – it was $449,000, but for a $550 buy-in event it was unbelievable to get such a huge prizepool. I assured a few young Adelaide boys that a $100,000 first prize would be reached, and even through they had heavy doubts it was still achieved! The prizepool may have appeared a little skewed, but on closer inspection it was pretty industry standard – however the only change that should have been made was changing the payouts from 81 to 72 as to represent the 705 unique players that took their seat.

8 – The Money Isn’t Going Nowhere (again): Just like in Adelaide, the money is staying firmly in Australia, and most importantly in Victoria following local Daniel Botta’s victory in under three hours on day three. Hopefully this will drag more amateur and pub poker players into the Crown Poker Room knowing that for just $550 and three days work – they can be $100,000 richer too!

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I hope now that it is clear why so many people enjoy the Joe Hachem Deep Stack Series and will hopefully venture back down to Melbourne in 2010 for the best value deep stack tournaments on this side of the world.

With the dilemma that is the 2009 WSOP and whether or not Tilted Behaviour will be there the current issue at hand; it will be only a matter of weeks before we’re back at it with the ANZPT Sydney (23rd April to May 1st) and then the Melbourne Poker Championships (17th May to 1st June).

The road ahead for this poker journalist is definitely going to be interesting, so make sure to stay tuned over the upcoming weeks for your poker fix!