Zero To Sixty

I can tell my play is significantly improving, but no matter how good you do, there is always the specter of the bad beat. Tonight it nipped me good. I was very much looking forward to finally building a bit of cash to move ahead, so it is quite depressing.

I was playing a $500 freeroll on Bodog, and I was doing quite well. I was in the top 250 with about 750 players left in the tourney. I was being patient and noticed how some players on the table were playing, which was pretty loose preflop and then fairly smart post-flop.

I was dealt pocket aces, and my only thought was how to best extract the maximum amount of chips. I was pretty sure that a pre-flop all-in would get no action and that a significant pre-flop raise would scare out quite a few limpers who would have mediocre hands. I knew it was a bit of a risk in terms of walking into a straight or a flush, but I felt that slow playing it was the best strategy for this group.

My best case scenario was that a king would fall, and a big raise by me would be met with an all-in by someone holding the a king. Well, a king hit the table with a couple of undercards. There was no chance of a straight or flush. My only concern was someone hitting trips, and the odds of that were very small. So I bet big out of the flop with a nice healthy pot due to all the limpers I had figured on.

And, as an added bonus, a player went all-in with me! He turned over a king and a two offsuit, and I can just imagine how his face fell when I turned over the pocket aces. Now, his only chance was hitting a king for trips or a two for two pair. That’s five cards out of 45. His odds of winning were a dismal 4 to 1 (20%). Winning this would put me in the top ten and I would be in VERY good position to end in the money.

The turn card fell, and it was that two I mentioned earlier. With one turn of a card, he hit a 4 to 1 shot and I was now behind. Now my only chance was matching up with one of the other cards or hitting an aced. That was eight cards, which ironically gave me roughly the same odds as my opponent had (5 to 1). I didn’t hit it, however, and I was out of the tournament.

All in all, a pretty lousy way to prove to yourself you’re getting better!

I’ve been too busy to do more than just play casual poker over the past few days. Today was the exception, and I played in the Bodog $500 Freeroll. The key story here was that I hit an unbelievable number of bad beats in a row. I had an ace high straight beat by a flush and triple 4s beat by triple 10s.

What really lost me the tournament, however was some major money hands where I played decent pot odds that didn’t pay. I think I had a couple of straight draws and a flush draw where I was drawn in with the very edge of good odds… 4 to 1 or so. Four to one pot odds with a $200 bet can pay off big, but a few of those in a row that fail to pay off and you are looking at a dwindling stack. That’s what happened to me.

I’m thinking that I may start to err on the side of caution in the future. Some people stretch pot odds to account for various implied pot odds–people betting later, etc. But I’m finding that, at least in the short term, I may need to look at it from the opposite direction. Perhaps I’m not accounting for dead outs or I’m discounting other things. We’ll see. I can say this, however, my play will be a bit more conservative in the future in this regard.

This has happened to me twice in two days now, so I need to take a break and do some research on what I’m doing wrong. What is the issue? Playing pocket pairs strong, only to get beat by three-of-a-kind draws. The first time it happened to me with QQ in my hand and no overcards on the flop. The second time was tonight. I was in very good shape heading into the third hour of the Bodog $500 Free roll when this happened:

I’m in middle position with a stack of $9,420, well in the top half of the field and higher than the tournament average. Binds are $150/$300. I’m dealt:

Very nice. The binds are placed and the player under the gun raises $800. I peg him for a good hand. Probably AQs or AKs, maybe even QQ or JJ. I re-raise to $1,760, figuring that I still have the best hand. While it is possible he has AA, the odds are remote that he does. He calls and the flop hits:

This is where I believe my thinking went awry. I looked at the flop, and the first thing I thought was, “No ace! I have the top pair!” After having been burnt by flopped three-of-a-kind the previous day, I took a look and noted that there was very little chance that anyone would raise 22 or 33 or call a re-raise on 22 or 33. That left the jack. If he had JJ in his hand, I was toast. I clearly remember thinking, “What are the odds that he has JJ and flopped a J? Minimal.” His lead out bet certainly made a statement: $1,940.

At this point, I should have folded. Why didn’t I fold? I was thinking that he had QQ or even TT. Clearly this was a stupid assumption when you consider his play. Being as aggressive as he was, he either had AA or JJ in his hand. Nothing else makes sense. Unfortunately for me, both of those pocket cards are winners. Being in denial, I raised him to $4,380. He went all-in, and I (for the second time in a row!) didn’t appreciate the poewr of his hand and called. With all-in called, he showed:

Three-of-a-kind jacks, and he has me beat cold. The next two cards were:

And with a couple hundred in chips left, I was basically out of the tournament.

I still am not entirely sure why I have such trouble playing big pocket pairs that lose. Earlier in this tournament I folded QQ against a strong bet with an ace on the table, but that was pretty clear: An overcard on the table is a fold waiting to happen. The difference here is that I simply couldn’t appreciate the reality that sometimes the momentous odds really do go against you.

I need to learn not to overvalue my hand, clearly. Whare are the odds of flopping a J with JJ in your hand? A ridiculous 23 to 1. But it happens, and when it does there are plenty of indicators. Re-raising a huge raise after the flop is a pretty clear indicator. These “betting indicators” are harder to appreciate because the opponent very well may be bluffing, but sometimes it’s just obvious. It was obvious here, and I just ignored the signs.

So in the future I need to stop overvaluing my hand. I’m doing that well gainst overcards. Now I need to take that lesson and apply it to strong betting indicators. It will make me a much stronger player and save my $9,000 top shelf stack from dwindling to near nothing in one hand.

Dead money is a phrase that refers to money involved in a poker game where the owner has no chance of winning it. So the dead money is basically the “free” money that all the other players fight for. I’m playing in the Bodog $500 Freeroll right now, and in the room of nine players, seven of them aren’t seated. As a result, all of their hands are being automatically folded in the face of any bet. As a result, all the blinds that are placed by these missing players are up for the taking between me and the other player.

This “head to head” situation with extra money tossed in is very lucrative, and I sit at the first break with over double the tournament average stack. As I told my opponent… Let’s hope they don’t come back!

If you play poker long enough you will certainly win hands you deserved to lose, but that still doesn’t make the sting of losing a hand against very poor play any less maddening. Tonight I basically got booted out of the Bodog $500 Freeroll due to losing a triple all-in which featured two players pushing all their chips ahead with very dubious hands. Take a look:

It’s early in the tournament, and the blinds are small. None of the stacks at the table are dangerously low. In fact, it looks like a normal early tournament hand. I was dealt a very nice:

I play pocket aces various ways, depending on thet table and how I’ve been playing. As a rule, I make an effort to vary my play. In this instance, I did a standard preflop raise of half the pot. Two other players called. Here is P1’s cards:

This is a fairly weak holding, especially against a preflop raise. However, the player was in the big blind, so I will give him credit for defending his position. In that position, it’s certainly a defensible call.

P2 had the following:

Again, this is a fairly weak holding, but against a preflop raise and another call, it’s a very dubious call.

Obviously I’m heading into the flop with a massive advantage. The only real concern would be a flush draw, and I was very prepared to raise the pot odds to make chasing a flush draw unfavorable. Here’s the flop:

I have three worries here: Someone was holding some kind of straight combination in their hand (Q9, 97), someone is holding 88, TT, or JJ, and the potential spade flush draw. Frankly, I generally see drawing a set as so unlikely that I ignore the possibility. I may need to re-address that situation, as I got burned by it in an earlier hand, but at the moment I wasn’t considering that as an option. So, I have to consider a flush draw and a straight.

I honestly didn’t think anyone would play even Q9 against a preflop raise (although, again, this was a pretty big error in judgement… I have to remember that one of the persons in the hand is defending the big blind, and he may have been doing that with a somewhat lesser preflop hand like Q9), so my mind only considered one thing: Bet out the flush draw.

P1, he of the A2, checked, and I bet the pot. To my utter astonishment, P2 went all-in and P1 quickly followed. A good poker player would have folded at this point, I must admit. The big blind could easily have the straight, and going all in after a flop like this was a BIG indication of someone flopping a set. I didn’t think that far ahead, however, I was looking at my AA overpair and simply decided that my opponents were playing stupid.

As it turns out, they were playing stupid. P1 went all in with nothing more than a flush draw (talk about gambling!), while P2 went all in with, goodness, nothing more than a pair of tens! While my rational for calling was very weak in the face of two such signs of strength, it turns out I had the strongest hand. Then came the turn:

And P1 hits his flush draw! The odds of him hitting it at either the turn or river were less than 35%, so making an all-in bet was quite foolish, but he hit it. As to poor P2? He was still sitting with a pair of tens. The river was academic, but the following card fell:

I lost a very large amount of chips, P2 left the tournament, and P1 came away in very good shape by rolling the dice on a long shot. Such is poker.

Well, in the very first hand after the third break I was booted from the tournament. The hand is an excellent illustration of what happens when you have a tiny stack–you have no flexibility. You just can’t play a hand normally. Here’s what happened. I was dealt:

Now here’s the scenario: I have a stack of $3,804.88. The blinds are $800/$1600 with a $150 ante. So just taking part in the hand costs me $1600. I was under the gun, so my position was poor, but I also am facing the reality that the blinds are coming fast. I could barely get through the blinds, but doing so would put me with such a low amount of money that I would have to have an extraordinary number of successful all-ins to get back into the tournament.

So my only option is to jump all over a good hand. The hand above is certainly a playable hand, even under the gun, but it is hardly a powerhouse. My hope was that everyone would limp in to the flop, and I’d be able to hit something good or, if not, get out with only $1600 gone.

The key was for everybody to limp in. Well, so much for that–a player in late position raised to $4,000. And this is thus my dilemma: Normally I would immediately fold. But that would lower my stack to $2200 or so. If I got a good hand and doubled, all that would do is take me to where I am right now. And if I didn’t get any good hands, I’d be out quickly. The result is that the raise behind me pretty much forced me to go all in with A8. The good news is that if I hit, I would come away with over $7K, which I could work with better than the $3K I currently had. The bad news is if I don’t hit… I’m out.

My opponent turned over:

Ouch! The only good news is that I had an Ace. If an Ace dropped I’d be in good shape. Unfortunately, the odds of that happening are 15 to 1. Not good. Here’s what dropped:

And my pair of eights weren’t good enough against his two jacks. After over three hours of poker play I was out, finishing in 99th place, a mere 36 places out of the money, and quite good when you consider the tournament started with 4,059.

Still, my  bankroll stands at a depressing $0.00.

It’s not looking good for me. I hit a stretch of poor flops and then I played a hand where my brains must have left my head. It cost me about $8K in chips, and took me down to a very dangerous position with a very small stack. I currently sit with a stack of $3,800 and the tournament average is currently $43K. Unless I can double up a few times I will be out shortly.

There is an outside chance I could end in the money as the top 63 places pay, but it will be hard. Currently there are only 104 players still alive in the tournament. So… it will be possible to make it. We’ll see.

Standing with a stack of over $14K at the second break of the Saturday night Bodog $500 Freeroll. I had $4K about five minutes into the break, somewhat upset over the very lengthy run of poor hands I’ve been receiving when, boom, I get dealt AA. I turned that into a few thousand, and then, boom, one hand later, I get dealt QQ. I turned that into even more. After a couple more hands that I played strong, I’m in the second break with a stack higher than the current tournament average.

Bodog doesn’t show what your current rank is, but there are 341players left, and I’m certainly in the top half. Looking forward to the next hour of play.

Had to take care of some family things with school tonight, so I missed the Bodog freeroll. I played in several of the Carbon Poker “Funstep” sit’n'go tournaments, and got past level 1 to level 2. I got busted in level 2 with a particularly bad beat (opponent hit triple kings when I had two pair As and Ks). So it’s back to the drawing board tomorrow.

I’m particularly proud of how I got to round 2, however. I got hit with two bad beats in a row, which took me down to $250 in chips head-to-head against my opponent, who had $5750 in chips. From that huge hole, I climbed out and won! I’ll take this as a good sign–this time I didn’t lose my head or my optimism when I got knocked to the floor. I came back and won.

Still, the nightly result was the same: Total winnings still sit at $0.00.

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.