Saturday Night Musings

I continue to play like crap.

Friday afternoon at about 4pm, the wife calls and says she’d really like to play in a hold ‘em tournament tonight and can I round up a few people to play. Um, duh.

Fast forward about 4 hours and there are 10 people sitting ‘round my table playing a $20 Sit ‘n Go. Of the 10 players, only three had any real poker experience: yours truly, Teddy Ballgame – a Thursday night home game regular, and DoubleR – a co-worker of mine with whom I regularly discuss poker.

I’m figuring that I should be able to place in this thing, right?

As is common with new players, min raises were the norm, and there was a bunch of cold-calling. I wasn’t about to make any fancy plays here, I just had to show down the best hand and that would be that.

I chipped up a bit early when I flopped trips and rivered a full house. Not soon after the third level begins at T5/10, I find pocket K’s on the button. DoubleR had limped in from early position and I made it T35 to go. The blinds folded and DoubleR raised it another T100 to T135.

Now here’s the thing.

I’ve spoken with DoubleR several times about playing pocket A’s in early position. Limp, re-raise. It’s fairly well documented in Brunson’s Super System and is a common play. I looked over across the table and KNEW DoubleR was holding them. With 100% certainty. So what did I do? I pushed.

At our regular Thursday night home games, we have a saying when we make a great read on someone and completely ignore that and make a play contrary to the read, “Great read, bad play.”

DoubleR did indeed have pocket A’s; and to add insult to injury, flopped a third. So I was eliminated out of my own home game in 10^th place out of 10 players.

Great read, bad play.

I retired to the upstairs computer room to hop online and win my entry fee back, risking the appearance of being a sore loser. It took about 30 minutes, but I did win it back and went downstairs to watch DoubleR use my chips to finish first.

Tonight rolls around and I’m wondering how the Bahama Boys are doing, how many shots of SoCo have been downed, and how the craps tables are treating them.

This hand cheered me up just a little, but by no means compensates for my absence: