Monday, October 19, 2009

Off to the races, when I should be watching from the grandstands.

It doesn't happen too often, thankfully, but I suffered an "insta-tilt" tonight. I raised up 88 from middle position, and someone three-bet over me. I took a quick glance at his stats and saw 46/20/7.0. Looking at his stats instantaneously pissed me off. I said to myself "you goddamn aggro-donkey - no fuckin way this time!" I shoved in with 88, he called right away with AK.

Nice job, dumbass - race the bad player for 22 big blinds. Well done.

You would think that my tilt would not improve after we saw a King-Ace-King flop, but it did. I laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of it.

Fortunately,
I had doubled up early in this tourney, so I was still alive with 1000 chips. A few hands later, another pair of eights saved me - I had them in middle position (three off the button) with only 12 blinds. Shoving in seemed wrong with so many people behind. Folding was out. Limping couldn't be right, either. I chose a normal 3x raise, which I'm sure isn't correct, but none of the options are good. The big stack, small blind called me, and I was sure I was going to have to fold and curse myself for playing badly, but I got the miracle flop - A K 8. The blind checked, I bet nice and weak, and he checkraise-shoved over me with his ace, and I got my doubleup. I was able to parlay that lucky stroke into a third place finish.

The last hand was sick as well - while three handed, I shoved KJ, and was insta-called by AQ. Never mind that we both got dealt powerful hands while three handed, that's weird enough.

We both hit our top card on the flop, so I had five outs left. Like a bolt from above, I hit one of them on the turn - A jack, giving me 2 pair, but the villain had a fair number of outs to out-2-pair-me (a queen or seven, 6 outs), or another ace (2 outs), or a ten for the broadway straight (4 more). The ten of diamonds completed the way-behind-then-way-ahead-then-oooo-too-bad-you-lost rollercoaster.

I played a second one, too, but I bombed out of that one. Someone raised my blind and I had AK, and I reflexively shoved over him. Never a horrible play with big slick, but this one wasn't optimal for a couple reasons:

Blinds were still low - 40/80.
Raiser was 38/6 after 32 hands.
Raiser was the big stack.
Raiser only made it 2.5 big blinds to go.

Surely, this is not a great player - limping into 32% of the hands, but this was a raised pot - I've got to put him on something pretty strong here. Why not just defend and see if you can hit your ace or c-bet a garbage flop?

The combination of all the above made it pretty likely that he would call, and he did, with pocket tens, and I lost the race.

Why am I racing the bad players when I don't have to? More mistakes I need to correct (in this case, correct again).

1 comment:

Memphis MOJO said...

Off to the races, when I should be watching from the grandstands.

Great title.