A Costly Bad Beat

Last night I finished 12th in the $100 rebuy event at Poker Stars. $40K was paid out to first place and I was paid out $1900. I lost an unfortunate hand right towards the very end. Blinds were 3-6 with 300 antes. I raised to 18K from the cutoff. The SB RR to 65K. I Reraised another 65K or so and my opponent pushed allin for another 50K. I called and my opponent showed A-J. If my hand holds up, I am second in chips with 11 players remaining. My opponent spiked a J.

The following isn't to bitch about my opponent's play. I am very happy that he trapped himself and I got my chips in as a big favorite, so this isn't bemoaning a bad beat but I think it gives a good example for players to learn from.

My opponent made a big mistake in this hand. He thought that he was ahead of my range of hands with A-J. This was correct. Since I was in the cutoff, I would raise a wide variety of hands in that position and would fold to many reraises. The problem is that he picks up $35K or so when I fold, but is mostly a big dog when I put him allin. Because of the awkward chip stack sizes, he was close to being pot-committed with his hand after he makes that reraise. I need to go doublecheck this later, but I think we was basically committing an addition 115K to win 360K. He pretty much needs to call after building such a big pot. So he can't escape his reraise which means he is basically risking 180K when a big dog to win 35K. This isn't the best risk-reward ratio!

The lesson of this hand is that you shouldn't always play a hand simply because you think it is likely the best hand. You must look at the risk-reward ratio for the times you are ahead and the times you are behind - something my opponent failed to do.

So another deep run on Sunday that falls just short. MTT's is a tough business! I needed to make the final table to break-even for the day as I played nine big tourneys yesterday.

I really need to get my workspace upgraded so that I can play multiple tables without my laptop. I had problems with my wireless yesterday, and to make a long story short, timed out with a set on the river with a big pot in the 750K guarantee at FTP. It was a big pot and really pissed me off for about 30 minutes afterwards. Time to get an upgraded monitor!