Well, let’s start this off with the finishes from yesterday’s PJK Tourney. Congratulations to stinky, Roy, Rick and Jason. And huge thanks again to Felicia for setting this thing up. After my exit I was counting on hdouble to take the tournament, but he let me down.
1) stinkypant – $228.00 (Dogs Playing Poker)
2) RoyCooke – $114.00 (Planet Poker Cardroom Manager)
3) RicksCafe – $68.40 (Rick’s Cafe)
4) JsonHoldEm – $45.60 (Poker Odyssey)
5) gpoker (Genius of the Poker)
6) hdouble (The Cards Speak)
7) DOMIT aka Felicia (Felicia Lee’s Poker Journal)
8) Paulburbon (Paulsburbon)
9) PaulyMcG (Tao of Poker)
10) minorthird (Down to the Felt)
11) DontPokeMe (Don’t Poke(r) Me)
12) shftleft (Tight Pocket
13) Mckormick (Diary of an Online Poker Player)
14) dbGrinder (Internet Poker Grinder)
15) tpfelt (tp’s table talk)
16) Mean_Gene (Mean Gene’s Poker Blog)
17) chrisdhal (Chris Halverson’s Blog)
18) whiskytown ()
19) _chainsaw_ (The Fat Guy)
20) StoneKillr (2+2 Forums)
21) AlCantHang (Dead Money = AlCantHang)
22) EOS (Go All-in Forums)
23) boygza aka. Boy Genius (random thoughts and thoroughbred selections)
24) MaudieB (Poker Perspectives)
Apparently Shftleft didn’t actually show up the table and simply folded his way into 12th place. Makes me feel even worse about my finish.
I actually played the first hour of the tournament pretty well, flirting with the chip lead on a few occasions. Of course, I was firmly in the chip lead when I made my big mistake. KTs, UTG+1, I make a minimum raise (we were at 75/150). I’d had a lot of success so far with infrequent early position steals. I had been playing so few hands that often no one wanted to challenge me. stinky re-raised me T150 and everyone else folded. I thought he was just trying to scare me off a bluff. So I came back over the top for another T500. He quickly called and the flop came TAx. Not great, but I bet at it anyways, another T500. At best it might generate a fold, at worst I’m paying to try to maintain an image of playing strong cards. stinky calls and the turn comes a K. I’m thinking that there’s a good chance I’m best with 2-pair here, so I lead out with another T500. stinky comes back over the top all-in. Now here I should have figured he had at aces-up, probably AK…but in the short time I had available to decide, I managed to convince myself that all he had was an ace. I called and he flipped over AA and I was drawing dead. And I’d gone from the chip lead to a short stack. And I doubled stinky up to put him in very good position (which he turned into the win) A few hands later I’m in the small blind and I call a bullying all-in bet at an AKQ7 board to have my 67 lose to 78. In the span of just 5 hands I was out of the tournament.
Three key mistakes, all in one hand. First, playing KTs at all. I was reminded by multiple people afterwards that it’s not a great hand, especially in a tournament. Second, I assume that the re-raise was to scare me off a bluff. The re-raise wasn’t horrible, as I wanted to maintain the image that I was playing only strong hands, but abandoning the small raise would have been the wise mood with the hand I had. Third, the all-in call. There’s no excuse for that. It was just wrong, wrong, wrong.
I then proceeded to hit the 1/2 tables at Empire to try to redeem myself and managed to go on a terrible run. Coldest of cold cards compounded by some poor play and I managed to return all the money I’d made in the afternoon and then some. The less said about that session the better. I talked to Iggy (we miss your posts, buddy) a bit afterwards and he gave me some helpful pointers a little cheering up, for which I was very grateful. The worst part is I know what mistakes I’m making, almost as I’m making them. But I can’t quite seem to shake them.
Sorry to bust you out, you were playing well, I got very lucky and was clearly over my head at many points. I would’ve played your k10 the same..hope to see you next week.