My Poor Play, Their Poor Play, And Luck Wins
Posted by: Jake // Category: Freeroll tournamentIf 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.
