I took part in another Bodog $500 freeroll tonight, but I exited the tourney quickly. I hit one of those streaks you simply can’t do anything about–a run of playable hands that weren’t winners. In an attempt to finesse some chips out I even played aggressively, but my opponents didn’t back down. As a result, my stack dwindled quickly, even as I played fairly well. Here’s a good example.
With my stack at $1,000 in an early round and the blinds at $5/$10, I was dealt in the big blind:
This is not a bad big blind draw, and I limped in for $10. The small blind raised it to $35. That wasn’t a good sign, but with an ace in my hand, a flush draw, and a mere $15 to potentially snag $50 (close to 5 to 1 odds), I figured that it was a small price to pay to see the flop. Which came…
Bingo! Top pair on the flop! Now all I had to worry about is what the small blind was raising pre-flop. The odds were against him having KK or AA and him flopping a set. My best guess was that he had QQ, AT, or something similar. I also considered there being a small chance he had AK. Of all the combinations, the only one that I considered realistic and that scared me was if he had an ace and a higher kicker, as my kicker was a lowly 5.
Small blind came out with a modest bet of $50, which I expected. I wanted to test him immediately (unlike my performance the previous night, where my passivity cost me lots of chips), so I raised him another $50 to $100 even. The idea was certainly good, but I should have come in stronger. The truth is that I didn’t want to lose more chips than I needed to, but I needed to push him off the idea that I may have had a K pair, and I certainly needed to destroy any flush draw pot odds he might have. A proper raise here would have been $150 or so. That would have put the pot at $250, with him having horrible flush draw pot odds.
Anyway, he re-raised me, and since he did raise preflop, the flush draw talk is probably moot. As it was, I would have folded right there, but the raise was only $50, and a call was certainly in order to see the next card. I called.
A good card in that it didn’t change the balance on the table. There was still a flush draw, but I had top pair. Small blind ended matters right there, however, by betting the the pot with $365. I folded on the spot.
I lost $170, which took me to $830, not a horrible place but certainly not the way you want to start a tournament. All told, I believe I played this hand okay. Betting strong on the flop would most likely have gotten me re-raised and led to a fold–making me lose about the same amount of money. On the other hand, I am sure that doing that was a better play.
What followed were a number of hands that were playable, some even in the face of raises, but in the end poor flops and turn cards required me to fold with a loss. I did make a big mistake, however, and it was the clincher: I called a $200 preflop raise with AT suited. When the T hit the flop, and I had top pair and Ace kicker, I couldn’t have been happier. I bet $215, and was aghast when the preflop raise fellow raised me to nearly all-in. I was clearly facing a higher pocket pair and folded. That took me down to a couple hundred bucks, and when I lost a good all-in to double my hand on a bad beat, my tournament was over.
So here I am at the end of day two with the same result: $0.00.
Tags: Bodog, freeroll, mistakes, top pair