Nemesis

There always seems to be one person who really hurts you in poker. Tonight at the American Legion I ran into one. The evening started poorly with me being asked to deal one of the four tables. I really hate that as it distracts from my play, but i reluctantly agreed. The table was pretty good to me, and being on table 3 I finally got to be a regular player when we got down to 2. I made the final table, but was fairly short stacked. I finally go really lucky when I pushed with A/8 offsuit in the small blind and was called by the big blind with KQ offsuit. I caught an 8 on the flop and runner runner 8's for quads, which knocked off the high hand of AAAKK. It pays $88 and with only 7 players left, looked like it would stand up. This is where my nemesis comes in. One guy flops quad aces and kicks my 8's off the board. A few hands later he raises to 6,000 (blinds 1 and 2,000) with AQ. I reraise with pocket 10's all in for 5000 more and he calls. The flop was low, but an ace hit on the turn and I am out of the tournament in 6th place for a $92 win. It was bittersweet since there were two short stacks at the table that probably would have gone under first, and I would have moved up substantially in the money.......but, I was playing for 1st place and not just a few bucks more.