Well not a good night on the virtual felt after finally logging on to 888 last night to play the tournaments, I busted out of all of them without cashing in a single one. Four tournaments, four blanks. I will concede that it was a mixture of misfortune, my fault and not meant to be so close to cashing in 3 of them but the Poker Gods has other plans on Saturday night.


This weekend I have lost 2% of bankroll in the tournaments I have particapated in, which is why bankroll management is so important as it allows you to deal with the swings and roundabouts the game of poker throws at us.
 
There is one hand however that left a very bitter taste in my mouth, I had been flying in the $2K Guaranteed and throughout the tournament was never short stacked so it was gutting to bust out of this one in the manner it happened. 


Basically I wake up with A♠ A♦ and all the chips go in pre-flop and the river killed (see below).





Now it could be said that it is one of those things sent to try us and we have to dust ourselves down and remember hands like that don't happen often. But I always like to look at any hand regardless of the strength of the hand when the chips go in and see if I could do anything different. So I will break the hand down and see if there were other avenues to persue which may have made me walk away from the hand without me knowing I had the best hand until the river.


As I said I woke up with A♠ A♦, the blinds are 300/600 with a 60 ante and I have 19,721 chips (just a shade under 33 Big Blinds).


UTG makes just a little over a minimum raise to 1,290 and the action folds round to me in the Big Blind. So what are my options here, first I have to look at the type of player I'm up against. Now I only played 90 hands against them so not going to gleam much information out of that other than their playing style which is a tight agressive player who is a loose pre-flop raiser and very aggressive post-flop. Even though they are a loose pre-flop raiser I still have to give the pre-flop raise creditability as it is UTG. Hadn't got many instances of this player in 3-Bet situations but does fold 66% to a 3-Bet but again my opponent had raised from UTG so less likely to fold.


As I am guaranteed this hand will be played heads-up and both myself and my opponent are both deepstacked (opponent has 20,530) I could just call for deceptive purposes. I don't like that plan as a lot of players min-raise with usually AA,KK or small to medium pocket pairs especially from UTG in my experience and also by flat calling I'm not really finding out how strong their hand is. So I elect to 3-Bet to 4,800, I am more than happy just to take the hand down now as there is a good chance they will fold the rubbish end of their range from here. Now they fire in a 4-Bet to 8,310, I do give it some serious thought here to flat call. It is definately clear that my opponent has a very strong starting hand and I don't want to go out 9 places shy of the money and I have now put my opponent on Kings as they are unlikely to be 4-Bet me light.


But I know I'm ahead so jam all my chips in to make them pay (maybe a bit greedy). He calls and well you know what happened he spiked the K♦ to river me and take me out of the tournament.


So could I have got away from this hand and avoided the cooler in my opinion, no. If I had flat called the the UTG raise I would have check/raise on the flop as Q♣ 9♣ 9♥ is not a scary board and I doubt my opponent would have been scared by the two nines on the board. If the chips hadn't have gone in by the flop they would have been on the turn and I would still have been beaten on the river.


If I had flat called the 4-Bet I would have shoved on the flop and again don't think my opponent is folding here either so would have been beaten by the river again.


So in conclusion I can't see a way in this hand that I can walk away from it the chips would have gone in and I would have lost on the river.


If anyone has any thoughts please feel free to post them.


See you at the tables.


ChipPhilfer