poker blog

February 20th, 2004

I played in the $3 buy-in no-limit tourney Pokerstars has at 10:30 at night. There were 1,500 people in there and I make it to the final 13. My stack was small but I wasn't in critical condition but I was playing to win because 13th paid about $30 but 1st place paid about $1,000 so I needed to double up to get near the chip lead. The blinds were $4,000/$8,000 and "rock55", who is in 2nd place, open-raises to $35,000. I go all-in for $55,000 with pocket 10's thinking he is either raising with 8-8,9-9, or with 2 face cards. I am either way ahead or a 50/50 and I am happy to take that chance. He'll have to call for only $20,000 more. But then the player to my left (the chip leader) re-raises all-in to $210,000. I know that he has pocket Aces. "rock55" thinks for the maxmimum amount of time then folds. I think he had a strong pair. The ironic thing is that I wouldn't have minded if he folded (think he might have had me beat with JJ and he) but it happened for the wrong reason. I knew the chip leader had pocket Aces because he is the chip leader and rock55is the 2nd place chip leader and there is no reason for the chip leader to come over the top of the 2nd place player who put in a 4X BB raise with me calling who was tight-aggressive waiting for my double-up hand. It was obvious I had a good hand and probably "rock55" also. When oyu are a big stack you don't want to get involved in big pots with other big stacks for 2 reasons: 1. you can go from chip leader to cheer leader in 1 hand and 2. if you concentrate on the small stacks you can knock them out and move up the money ladder.

Now I flop the nut boat and I am WAY ahead. He only has 2 outs. Now comes the turn and river . . .

He makes quads with the Ace kicker to beat me quads with 10 kicker. I would have had the chip lead but I got shafted. Oh well, I was behind pre-flop so I guess he deserved to win.

February 29th & 31st, 2004

Here I flopped quad Kings 2 sessions in a row. Odd.

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