Thursday, September 21, 2006

How I Played Like Shit for a Cruise

I just made a pathetic showing in the Pokerblog.com WSOP Invitational. 13 of us who contributed to the site during the WSOP were invited to slug it out on the Party Poker felt for a freeroll. The seriously awesome prize? A luxury cruise for two. Seeing as those are probably the best odds I will ever see when it comes to winning a trip for myself by playing poker, I was totally psyched... that is until I lasted less than 30 minutes into the tournament.

I picked up A-A early and won a small pot on the K-7-Q flop against Michalski. I picked up one set of blinds with K-Q. Then I found 9-9 in EP and raised to 175 with 30-60 blinds. The SB and BB both called. Flop was J-3-2 with two diamonds. I have no diamond. The SB checks and the BB min-bets 60 into the 425 chip pot. I raise to 300, the SB folds and the BB calls. I put the BB on a diamond draw. Turn is the 3h. I fire 750 and the BB calls again. Now I'm worried about a jack. The river is perhaps the worst card in the deck for me... the Ace of diamonds. Thankfully, the BB just decides to min-bet another 60 and I call it off. BB had K8 of diamonds and my stack is already sliced in half thanks to some unfortunate luck.

I made two pair against Michalski and got back up to 2400 of my 3000 starting chips, but I wouldn't hang on to them for long.

J-J in EP, I raise to 300. Michalski calls on the button and the BB calls. Flop is 7-7-3, no suits. I like this flop for my jacks. The only thing I'm really worried about is a 7, because a bigger pair would have likely re-raised. The BB leads with a min-bet of 100. BB has something (medium pair? Draw?) , but I have to see where I stand. I raise to 425. Michalski folds and the BB re-pops it to 650. That sends alarm bells off in my head. What hands containing a 7 would call from the BB. Really just A-7. Mayyyybe 7-8 suited. I have to call 325 more into the pot which now stands at 2125. So I do. Turn is a 10. The BB min-bets 100 again. I cannot fold for 100 so I call. The river is a 3. The BB min-bets 100 one more time. And one more time I cannot fold for 100 so I call. BB had 7-8. More stack goes poof for me. (Is it insane to just fold there on the flop when I've put him on a 7?)

With something like 700 left and 100-200 blinds, I moved all-in three or four hands later with Qc-Qs. When April called on the button I knew I was dead, and her K-Q flopped a K to take me out in 11th place of 13.

Thankfully, my completely shitty play and worse luck will prevent the fist-fight that would have inevitably ensued between Showcase and Pauly over who I'd take along on the trip. Ah, the YouTube video that will never be...

Congrats to Tim "Poker Shrink" Lavalli who took it all down! If you haven't checked out his articles on Harrah's $2 million mistake at the WSOP Main Event, then get thee to Poker News.

2 comments:

ExMember said...

Is this the same big blind that had Kd8d eariler?

Assuming he has a 7 on the 773 flop, you need to hit one of the two remaining jacks to win a 1:23 proposition and you are getting about 1:21 odds currently.

But this guy wouldn't fold a king-high four flush to two 3/4 pot sized bets, so I don't see him laying down three sevens. If you hit you should get all his chips.

So yeah, that's an automatic call on the flop and turn.

Iakaris aka I.A.K. said...

There's mathematically correct, and the there's the chip preservation/trust your read correct.

Either way, Jacks have got to be the most agony inducing 2 cards you can get dealt in NLHE.