A week ago, I journeyed down to the Washington coast where I stayed at a hotel on the beach and played in three poker tournaments.
It was a cold, rainy, blustery weekend which is exactly why people like me go down to the coast in the winter. It's cool beyond belief to watch the weather roll in and watch the waves react, usually in all sorts of crazy ways. I had an excellent view of the action from my third floor hotel room and the whole thing had a rather calming effect on the ole pysche.
The tournaments were interesting, to say the least.
Tournament #1. Friday Night. 30 Players. I started off hot. Within ten minutes, I'd doubled my stack; not by taking anything huge off anyone but a little off several. And then my cards went dead cold. I didnt win another hand in the next hour and finished in the middle of the pack. Blech.
Tournament #2. Saturday Night. 27 players. I never got started at all in this one. I played for an hour, didnt win one hand and only hung on that long because I didnt get crazy with my chips. Another middle of the pack finish. Blech.
Tournament #3. Sunday afternoon. 25 players. This tournament pays three places. I finish third and win enough so I break even over the three days which isn't bad, all things considered. This was the interesting tourney. Things were moving along quite nicely and when we reached the final table of nine, your intrepid hero was sitting in the middle of the pack, chip wise, which isnt a horrible place to be. There was a ten minute break before we started the final festivities and I took advantage of the time to gaze out one of the windows at the ocean waves, pounding not fifty yards away. And then it was time for some action. And, action we got.
The guy to my right was the chip leader. On the very first hand out of the box, he raises the big blind. I get out of the way and the lady to my direct left raises the raise. Everyone perks up. Then some guy at the other end calls her raise, holy cow. AND THEN the guy on my right reraises and both of the other players call. And the rest of us sit there with our jaws slack open because, normally, when you start a final table, the play is usually very cautious as everyone tries to gauge what they're up against. Sometimes two people will go at it right out of the box but to have three people representing monster hands...well...that was pretty amazing.
It was even more amazing when the flop of the first three cards hits the table and Mr. Right Next To Me goes all in AND THE OTHER TWO CALL. The guy on my right turns over AA which is the strongest opening hand you can get. Ok...we knew one of them had to have something like that. But what was totally striking is the lady on my left turns over AK and the other guy turns over KQ.
Now...at that point no one had a pair with the flop so the best hand was still the AA. If you were a betting man, which of the other two hands would you say had the best chance of beating the AA? If you said the AK, you'd be dead wrong. And the reason why is why even a 72 (the worst hand in poker) would be a better hand at this point than AK. As strong as AA is for a starting hand, it only wins 32% of the time. The reason why is AA usually never improves. Whereas a KQ or even a 72 can catch two pair. AK is almost completely dominated in this situation because, while it can catch two pair, one of those cards has to be another A which then gives AA a set of aces and the win anyways. So the AK is almost drawing dead and the KQ needs a lot of help. Which it doesnt get so, first hand out of the gate, two players are knocked from the table and one player takes a HUGE chip lead.
Which, frankly, everyone is happy to give him. When you're trying to finish in the money tis MUCH better to have one guy hoard all the chips than to have them evenly spread out over the table. One guy with all the chips means your other opponents are generally much weaker (as are you, of course) and it doesnt take as much to knock them out....especially since a guy who's just won a ton of chips usually begins acting like a total bully and pushes everyone else around every hand because he can afford to be wrong a few times whereas the weaker players dont have that luxury.
Unfortunately, that can backfire sometimes. And it did in this case. This guy with the new found wealth had at least three times the number of chips as anyone else at the table yet he didn't even finish in the money or on the bubble (fourth place) for that matter. He finished in fifth place because his cards suddenly went south on him. When he tried to bully someone, they happened to have a good enough hand not to be pushed around. And when he lost a couple of those kinds of hands, he then went on what's called "tilt". Going on tilt means to lose all sense of discipline and your play is then governed solely by emotions. Which, folks, is not a good way to play.
I ended up being the guy to knock him out and when that happened, he had his coat and was out of the room almost before anyone noticed. After all, no one wants to hang around after losing a stack of chips three times that of anyone else and not even finish in the money.
So then we finish things up fairly quickly and I win enough so my poker was free for the weekend.
Pounding waves and free poker...cant ask for much more than that.
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