By all rights, I should have finished in no worse than 3rd place at Wheeler last night. Let me run down the evening's game for you. I was above average chip stack early but ran into a trouble hand. Playing K/10 against a min-raise with another caller or two out of position in a blind, the flop was A/K/x. I decided to lead out to "find out where I was". The initial raiser, an unknown young kid off the street who had wandered into our game raised me from $300 to $600. He had chipped up big and was leader on our table. He played aggressively, and I thought pretty well. When Robert to my immediate right called his raise I folded, even though that left me below starting chip stack (we only begin with 1300...very slow blind structure so not as short a stack as you think). Robert ended up winning with A/9...had I stayed in making a very poor decision....would have tripled up as I went runners for a broadway straight. Oh well, a good decision is a good decision. One thing led to another and I was down to a single big blind at the 75/150 level. Our table broke and I drew great position, cutoff, so I could see quite a few hands before having to act. I chose wisely in a big volume unraised pot with my Q/10 off. The aggressive kid had followed me, and raised big on the flop with his 10/J no pair straight draw which folded the table. My queen high won and I was back in business.
Making the final table (23 total players) was a mini-miracle, but I was still short. Had a couple of good hands to double up and we were down to 5 players with 4 being paid (plus the bubble). Gary, one of the bigger stacks lost most of his chips (down to 500) with a bad beat...his A/10 vs. Q/10. Robert lost almost his entire big stack against the chip leader, Mike. The chip stacks stood as follows:
Mike Thousands
Robert: 1200
Kyle: Thousands
Gary: 500
Me: 1700
This hand came up: Blinds are at 500/1000. Robert shoves, everyone folds to me with K/K in the big blind, I call. Robert tables Q/Q. Nice to play with you, bubble boy!!! Except I forgot that Robert is a luckbox and hits his 2 outer. This is important. Notice that I now have exactly one small blind. Had Robert had 200 less, I could then fold my small blind and still have 200 left with Gary forced into a pot before me. So now I am all-in small blind. Mike is big blind with tonnage of chips, but surprisingly folds when Robert shoves. Heads up, he shows Q/9 and happily I have 5/5 so am again ahead. The flop brings a 9, the turn a queen and I am out on the bubble. With any breaks at all I finish no worse than 3rd. Ouch and double ouch.
1 comment:
Ouch is right! There is nothing worse (in my opinion) than losing a huge hand like KK to a 2-outer. Gak. It's just wrong. From what you wrote, however, you didn't make any mistakes. Folding K-10 when you did was the right thing to do so you have nothing to fret over. Maybe the end would have been different if you had waited one hand, but maybe not. Such is life. And poker. Why do we do this to ourselves LOL?
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