I have yet to duplicate my success from earlier this week, and I didn’t even get close to the “money” today. I wasn’t completely free from blame – I did miss the 1st half hour of one tournament and some hands certainly could’ve been played Online Casino Malaysia better than they were on my part – but for the most part bad decisions were not the problem. I had some bad luck.
I set myself up for trouble when I raised with pocket queens late in a limit game and then got scared off when an ace came on the flop. I was probably beat at that point, but the odds that I’d catch a queen later or that my opponent might be bluffing could’ve been enough to make it worth it for me to continue betting. I didn’t, and found myself with a very short stack. With that short stack, I bet my final 800 chips with an ace and an eight. I paired the ace, but not the eight. I lost to someone who paired a four and a six.
In my second game of the day, I had just amassed a significant stack and was faced with a re-raise against my pocket queens by a much shorter stack. Armed with the knowledge that people raise with much weaker hands than what I held and that I could survive a loss, I pushed all in and got called. The caller had a king and a three, and the board didn’t have a king or a three. No queen either, but that didn’t matter. What it did have was a 4, a 5, a 6, and a 7, which knocked me back down to about 4000 chips.
I recovered, and was poised to take another big pot. I hit a straight on the flop, and there was just one other person in the hand after the initial pre-flop betting despite an absence of raises. I made a pot-sized bet and got called, and a third spade came on the turn. I had the king of spades, but I felt that the spade was bad news and slowed down. The river was not a spade, but I felt too pot committed to fold and ended up losing to a queen high flush. That hand didn’t knock me out, but it certainly hurt my chances of winning.
Not too much later, I had a relatively short stack and AK off suit. I decided to go all in, and got called by one person. With a queen and a seven. Nobody caught anything through the turn, and then a queen came on the river and I was out of the tournament.
The bad beats can be frustrating, but I shouldn’t be too upset. As long as my biggest problem is bad luck, then I should be in great shape in the long run. Of course, I could be suffering more from bad decisions than bad beats and just not realize it.
