Friday, June 4, 2010

Bad Set of Knockouts Yesterday

I played a set of 12 again yesterday. The blinds were up to 25/50 on all the tables when within a two minute span I picked up QQ on two tables, KK on a third and AA on a fourth - oh yeah! Three of the hands, all but the AA, were quite similar situations at full tables with me sitting as btn+1 with more or less my starting stack of 1500 chips and two or three players having limped ahead of me. I made a standard raise of 3x plus 1x for each limper and in all three the action folded around to the 2nd limper who flat called with a stack similar to mine!? Had the first limper check-raised me from early position I would have been wary. Limp-calling from the 2nd just smelled weak and I assumed they were most likely sitting on a medium pair, KQ or Axs type of hand. Now there is about 600 in the pot and I have 1200 chips remaining.

I got low unconnected flops in all three and the villian checked to me. I made a standard 50% raise and got reraised all in. I called and lost in all three. The QQ hands both ran into AA and the KK hand lost to a flopped set of 6s. Now, I could cry (even more) about getting unlucky, however, in retrospect I played these hands horribly!

As I'm now learning from Flynn's Professional No Limit Holdem, my bet sizing created a horrible situation where I allowed for the villian to move all in after my c-bet forcing me to call for all my chips rather than being the aggressor. Secondly, yes this is a $1 tourney, but calling off my stack so early with only QQ is still spewing chips. The KK was harder to get away from, but I have extensive experience showing that KK doesn't always hold up - LOL!

The AA hand was folded to me on the btn. I made a standard 3x raise and the bb called. The flop was K103 rainbow and the bb led out with a 30% pot bet. I made a 2.5x reraise which he called. The turn was another low card and he moved all in. Yes, I called off my stack again to see that he really did have K10!

After reminding myself not to overplay my hands so early, I managed to get the remaining 8 tables to the bubble. I bubble boyed three, but was happy with my play. AKo lost to A9s, AQs lost to A10s and a short stacked shove with A5s got called and lost to A9o.

With the 5 I cashed in I had one 1st, three 2nds and one 3rd. In two of the heads up matches I got stacked after moving all in with top two pair on the flop. In the game won, I also got all in on the flop with AA, while the villian had two pair. I rivered a set.

All in all a pretty horrible evening! I spewed chips with bad play, I was unlucky in several spots late and my heads up play still needs improving. The good news is that even after such a dismal set, I ended up with a whopping 25 cent profit thanks to the bounties - LOL! More importantly, I didn't tilt and convince myself that my mismanagement of the big pairs early were actually bad beats.

Getting away from an evening like this break even makes me optimistic about the future :)

Roland GTX

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