Diary of a Fish Playing The Venom at ACR Poker

The Road the The Venom

If my dad saw me playing a $2,600 tournament, I think his first reaction would be horror. It's impossible that a "virtual game" costs that much money. I'd be better off taking that cash and buying something useful. What he doesn't know is that it's all part of a social experiment.

It's been a long road to get here.

What's my background as a poker player?

• Twenty years ago, I sat down at a poker table for the first time.
• I played cash games at 16 tables simultaneously during the game's golden age.
• I was briefly sponsored by a stable that helped me support my studies.
• I was a dealer at a semi-underground poker club.
• I came in second in a local live tournament. The prize was a small cash incentive and dinner at a fancy restaurant, which I gave to my parents.
• We conducted this same social experiment in Las Vegas, playing WPT World Championship tournaments. Interestingly, with very similar results.

A couple of years later, rusty as hell, we sat down at the tables again. But this time, we're not alone. In the age of artificial intelligence, we've decided to make this a small experiment. How would a poker player play The Venom if they only had a few days to practice, with the help of generative AI?

First, we established some personal rules for this challenge:

1. We would train using generative AI, to stay on top of the trend.
2. We wouldn't use external software like PokerTracker.
3. 100% concentration. Only this active tournament, no social media, no cell phone, isolated in a room.
4. Some background music.
5. Our lucky charm would be the ACR Poker chip that has recognized us as a reliable partner over the years.

Training Plan

We sat down with our friend Claude to develop a realistic 10-day training plan, focusing on key tournament concepts plus a psychological foundation with an emphasis on stoicism.

The result, after a few iterations, was the following:

Theory

The plan we developed was really user-friendly. It was divided into consecutive sections and included short practical exercises to test each concept. The theory consisted of mathematical elements and game principles, with enough content for more than an hour a day. The exercises took a similar amount of time, although they often ran longer because they included review stages to learn from mistakes.

The most enjoyable part was the psychological training. Short exercises in stoicism focused on the dichotomy of control, which we used not only for poker but also for our personal lives. Mastering decision-making is crucial.

We handwrote more than 20 pages, and this little notebook remains as a memento of the experience.

Practice

For the practice session, the chosen tournament was The Boski Daily Double A $11 with a $7,500 guaranteed prize pool. It seemed like a good starting point because it had a 100BB structure with 8-max tables.

At first, we felt a bit lost. Going from theory to practice remains as difficult as ever. We were tempted to open our notebooks even to check if it was appropriate to raise with that KQo, or if those unpaired suited connectors from the button were enough to try stealing some blinds.

In this hand, for example, although we won, we got ourselves into unnecessary trouble. We decided to raise with 22 in early position, our continuation bet was called, and we were lucky enough to hit a set on the river.

We also admit that we got a little distracted—family calls, some web searches—which even left us without time to react. We noticed that many players experienced this when we applied some pressure.

We also lost some big pots when we faced slow play while defending the blinds. Again, we played hands that perhaps we should have folded preflop.

The training process continued, and we even defined a mantra based on what we saw in the test tournaments: DON'T get into unnecessary trouble. Another lesson that will be useful not only for playing poker.

For example, in this hand we applied an important stoic lesson: we had a good result from a bad decision. The key is that we can only evaluate our decisions, not their outcome. The bad beat was simply a matter of luck (all-in preflop after receiving a 3-bet on our raise from UTG).

Something else we did was watch other players. Especially those we know well, like crumbs23456, whom we saw using ranges in different positions, playing calmly, without surprises, almost following our mantra.

The Day of the Tournament

The chosen day to participate was February 24th, August 24th at 11:00 AM local time. Registering for a high-caliber live tournament feels different. When we visited Las Vegas, we had to go to the Wynn Casino's Ballroom, walk through enormous hallways surrounded by pieces of art, and see many players literally carrying bags of money.

Here, you just visit the lobby of your chosen tournament and click to register. If you have a sufficient balance (or a ticket in hand), you can participate; you'll just get a confirmation notification. No luxurious hallways, no bags of money, but $12 million in prizes. Two clicks, $2,650 less in the balance, a chip and a chair. Well, actually, quite a few chips.

When the first card was dealt, there were only 28 registered players, although this number would clearly multiply as late registration progressed.

Before the tournament started, we watched a video with Justin Kelly, who welcomed us. A nice touch that brings us a little closer to live poker and shows how the site cares about its players' experience.

Our first hand was 93o, not the best start, and we had a player sit-out. A $2.6k buy-in to start a sit-out is curious.

We noticed that the 3-bets in the early stages are very strong. Raise to 2.5bb, 3-bet to 12bb.

Some hands of the day:

After this hand, the affected player went all-in twice and was eliminated with TT vs KK. Clearly, seeing that four of a kind of sixes break his pocket kings was decisive in his elimination from the tournament.

It was common to see players trying to snag chips on dry boards, which we called a few times with ace-high.

The question we asked ourselves after this hand was, could we have won more chips? The fact that we were playing with 57s is irrelevant to the discussion.

This preflop all-in surprised us quite a bit, and although it helped us get a good read on the player with the 66 in hand, it was one of the root causes of our elimination.

The story of both players continued, exchanging chips back and forth.

The rabbit hunt took a bit of a toll on our ego in this hand. We folded preflop to avoid problems against very loose players, and from what we saw, it could have worked out very well.

As we said before, the story of this player, whom we saw betting all his chips repeatedly, inevitably crossed paths with ours.

We caught the fish, but it didn't work out well for us.

The logic behind this hand is: we had a clear read on the player, we knew he raised with marginal hands, and we wanted to isolate him with a preflop all-in, which we achieved, but the cards weren't in our favor.

Farewell: The Fish in the Mirror

And then came our elimination. Our last hand was against this same player. We isolated ourselves again with TT, he called with KQs (a much better hand than the previous one), and the board, almost cruelly, was 9Q5TJ, giving us a set (luck was a rollercoaster, and we had a 93.2% chance of winning that turn) and a straight on the river for the villain. Four hours of play. The poker gods decided that our chips, those of a fish, would end up in the hands of another.

Mathematically incorrect? Of course. The long-term lesson is that even if a read is correct, it's not worth risking all your chips on it.

After playing and exiting the tournament, lamenting our poor decisions (which we wanted to portray as heroic), the final step was to return to our AI coach with our hand history to get feedback, which we summarize below:

“Technically, you're no longer a casual player. The consistency you showed in your opening ranges and the discipline to fold complex hands demonstrate solid progress given the limited time available.

However, the two biggest pots of the day were a bit too much for you. You weren't just applying pressure; you were committing your entire stack. While there's a strong foundation in correctly reading your opponent (a very aggressive villain who plays many marginal hands), the correct action was precisely to play more hands against him, not to bet all your chips on a coin flip.”

And that's what poker is all about for me. Behind all the math, statistics, and cold numbers, there's a game of people that should be fun. Let your heart pound inside while your eyes try to maintain the best poker face possible. Going all-in might be the wrong decision in many cases, but the feeling it brings is almost unmatched.

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Anton

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