Yesterday afternoon, after spending three days in AC, I returned to the Tuna Club for their $150 Sunday tournament. The holiday weekend must’ve cut into the player base, because by the time the game started, we were 6-handed on one table, and eventually ended up with only 10 buy-ins.
I wish I could say I won, but I didn’t. I went out around 5th. But I played really well. I was making reads and strong plays. Unfortunately, though, as we all know by now, you can do everything right and still lose.
If you want to skip a bad beat story, go on to the next paragraph. Otherwise, get comfortable. I had about 8.5k in chips with starting stacks of 4.5k. As has been the case lately, I was mostly card dead for the tournament, but I was able to maximize some hands where I actually caught a good flop. The blinds were increasing, though, so so was my aggression. I finally was dealt KK in EP. With blinds of 150/300, and an ante of 25, I raised preflop to 1300 after there were a couple of limpers. I got one call from a player who liked to talk about how bad he was at poker while taking down hand after hand. The flop was a beautiful AKx with two hearts. I considered my options and checked. I knew that if he didn’t have an Ace, he was out of the hand, and if he did have an Ace, I’d be able to rope him in for his stack, provided he had a decent kicker. I led out with a strong bet and he pushed. I called and he showed AQ. He looked like he was ready to muck at first when he saw my set, but after tabling his hand, someone mentioned that he was drawing very slim. Even another Ace wasn’t good enough, as it would give me a full house. Naturally, the turn was an Ace and someone else mentioned that he needed the case Ace or one of three Queens to win. The river was a Queen.
The table erupted, but I kept my calm. In fact, I had a huge grin on. I’ve noticed that I am doing this more and more, as you will learn from my AC for X-mas Trip Report, provided that I ever write it up. It’s merely an extension of my belief that you gain nothing by showing your disappointment. Players pick up on your complaints or your general hangdog demeanor. It’s like throwing chum to the sharks. It’ll only up the amount of times you get called down (and then get sucked out on) or get raised and have to fold. So, I smiled. I laughed it off. I said, “Better to happen here then in a cash game,” because that’s actually a very true sentiment. In a cash game, I’m losing my stack. In the tournament, where, incidentally I covered my opponent, I took a hit. But I could come back.
I didn’t. Come back, that is. Losing that hand made me the shortstack and I wasn’t able to mount a comeback, eventually pushing into an overpair when I hit middle pair and thought my opponent was just continuation betting. So goes poker. But at least I wasn’t a whiney bitch about it.
On an entirely unrelated note, I was chatting with a coworker today when she asked about the guy who recently won $1M playing poker. I figured out that she was talking about the PokerStars Million Dollar Challenge, or whatever they call that show that Negreanu does. She saw it while channel surfing to avoid watching the NY Giants embarrass themselves on national television. My coworker mentioned how she thought it was wrong for a priest to play poker (one of the contestants was a priest) and we bantered for a bit. But the important part is that the show is further exposing the non-poker-playing public to poker. This can only be good for poker.
Until next time, make mine poker!
