It's all about the bad beats

I just got knocked out of the fourth qualifying tournament for the big blogger championship on PokerStars Sunday.

Before launching into the sad tale, I should probably talk about why I played at all, since I had already qualified. The PokerStars web site had said that winning additional seats would do one no good. That temporarily looked wrong, when Gadzooks posted an email she got from Stars after winning a second spot. It said that she could transfer it to somebody else. However, a follow-up email she posted later said that that was wrong. So the motivation of winning a second seat and passing it to a less-fortunate blogger buddy was nixed.

That left me with four motivations to play. First, I could deny somebody else a seat in the final. Well, that's not really much of a motivation. It seems pretty stupid to invest three or four hours to reduce the final tournament field from 432 to 431. Second, it's just fun to play with other bloggers, some of whom I read and some of whom read me. Third, if I could get to the top 45 or better, I'd win another chance at gaining entry to real-money Sunday tournaments, not just the blogger freeroll. Fourth, since I don't play many online tournaments, it gives me some practice at zero cost.

I did have some ethical question about whether to play, since I might deprive somebody else of a seat. But I finally decided that poker is fundamentally a selfish, self-interested game, and the self-interests listed above--especially the third--were sufficient to justify the time investment. So I played.

By the way, I also played yesterday in the weird Omaha/8 pot-limit tournament. Couldn't get anything going. It was just pathetic, which is why I didn't post anything about it.

Today's tournament was way different from Tuesday's, in which I won a seat in the final. I neither gave nor received a serious bad beat in that one, but today that was the dominant theme. Also, in that one I succeeded by getting an absurd frequency of pairs, sets, and full houses. Today, only one pair turned into a set. I guess it all evens out.

So here we go. This is hand #4 of the tournament:



Probably my worst tendency when playing online is to constantly think that people are trying to bluff me. I call or push back hard in many spots where I shouldn't. In fact, this tendency is so strong that the great Julius Goat based one of his characters on me--see here. My habit was exacerbated today by the knowledge that I didn't really need to win. That gave me more leeway to indulge my curiosity and doubts, which sometimes worked out nicely; other times not so much, as you'll see.

In the above hand, my suspicion worked in my favor. I was right to doubt him. This double-up propelled me into an early leader position:




Next up is hand #27, my one and only flopped set:




We move on to hand #72:



Here my suspicious mind worked against me. The all-in move was a good one on his part, because it looked to me like a steal. After I raised from first position, he had to credit me with a pretty big hand, so it didn't make sense to me that he would actually think he had the best of it with any hand with which he wouldn't have tried a pre-flop reraise. The exception would be a flopped set, but if that were the case, I thought he would try milking instead of shoving. I was just plain wrong in my read, even though I took quite a bit of time to think it through, and it cost me dearly. That hand dropped me down to 200th place out of 380 remaining.

Just three hands later, I played the Doubting Thomas again:



His ridiculously huge raise from the big blind looked to me like an obvious steal of all those limpers' chips with nothing, so I figured I was at least even money to beat him. Wrong! But as Julius says of the player profile based on me, he "catches up from behind like his name is Don Beebe." Hee hee hee!

This beat prompted a mini-tirade from ikke_tom:

Rakewell1: thought you were just stealing
cj28000 [observer]: lol
Dealer: Game #23035021896: ingy104 wins pot (60)
Ikke_Tom [observer]: ? and u think i would fold after that?
Administrator: 1,000 FPP satellite to January 3rd's 8,000 FPP LAPT-Viña del Mar Qualifier starts in 5 minutes. To register see T126570454 under the Events/LAPT tab.
Ikke_Tom [observer]: idiots ....pff
cj28000 [observer]: lol
Rakewell1: no, course not
Dealer: HappyPixel, it's your turn. You have 14 seconds to act
Ikke_Tom [observer]: bah
Dealer: Game #23035028164: HappyPixel wins pot (120)
Dealer: Limits going up: blinds 40/80
Dealer: FundelMental, it's your turn. You have 14 seconds to act
Dealer: Game #23035045154: Woozy Player wins pot (80)
AlCantHang: this isn't poker, it's bingo
Ikke_Tom [observer]: it is with morons like him
cj28000 [observer]: yip
Rakewell1: lol

Some people just can't take bad luck. It would be entertaining, I think, to engage in competitive IQ testing with all the people who call me "moron" and "idiot."

That hand boosted me up to 75th place out of 369 left, and I went into the first break at 94th out of 339.

The next significant hand was #112:



Yep, same theme: I just didn't believe him and got insanely lucky on the river. (I vaguely recall that his play on a couple of previous hands had given me some reason for suspicion, but I admit I can't remember those details now.) That pushed me back into contention, 41st place.

Another big boost came at hand #118:



Once again, I was convinced he had nothing. I did have reason here. This guy had been a thorn in my side, reraising me every time every time I put in a raise. I decided it was time to take a stand, and if I happened to be doing it the one time he actually had something, oh well, them's the breaks. Besides, I had the nearly unbeatable 2-4! I didn't see his cards, but I guess I was right that he was stealing every bit as much as I was.

That pot pushed me up to 4th place, though by the time I grabbed this screen shot just a few seconds later somebody had already climbed one over me:




That same player and I clashed once more, in hand #126:




A while later I got whisked away to a new table. I decided to use my biggish stack and newly arrived status to push people around a bit (players are more cautious with the new guy at the table), in hand #154:





I love it! Go for a rather audacious out-of-position steal, and flop the nuts! I just wish I could have gotten paid off for it. Still, it was a big enough pot to finally get me back into the top ten:





But then came icky hand #164. This particular opponent had raised my eyebrows because I had seen him push all-in as an opening raise, just a crazy move given his chip stack. That image paid off for him here, because I thought my A-J was probably good:





Oops. It was a terrible call on my part. After having worked so hard to climb back into the top ten, I should have just let it go, even while believing that he was just stealing, rather than risk so much of my stack. Better spots would have come along. That dropped me down to 74th place out of 171 remaining. Not lethal, but not as good as staying in the top ten, either. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I went into the second break a little later at 63rd out of 128.

On hand #190, my bad-beat chickens came home to roost. Karma demands that after administering so many suckouts I get one in return:




Ouch! Now you see the real lesson of my bad A-J vs. A-K hand. If I had let that one go, I would have still been in a much better position to absorb this subsequent beat without being put into short-stack territory.

As it was, though, this really crippled me--down to 109th out of 123 left. I hung on for a while longer, repeatedly moving all-in to steal the blinds and hoping for a double-up. I finally did it with 3-3 and got called by Q-Q. I couldn't find one more bad-beat arrow in my quiver for the day, and was done.

But it was still a fun game, worth the couple of hours that it took. Hopefully I also re-learned some lessons about picking my spots better. We'll see.

I think there's only one fitting way to close this post, given its recurring theme: