Eric Rizen Lynch

Lady luck and missed opportunities

Well, first the quick recap. I cashed in 1 of 9 tournaments last night, and in that 1 I only made it to the second level of money so $$$-wise, it wasn't a particularly great night. I played fairly well, and lady luck was on my side early in quite a few of my tournaments as I got my chips in the middle with the significant worst of it 4 times last night and managed to suck out. Considering stack sizes etc I don't think any of my pushes/calls with the worst of it were wrong, but I was definitely hitting some key suckouts.

Which makes the results all that much worse. I really only made 2 BIG mistakes last night, but they were pretty bad. First, I broke one of the cardinal rules of poker. Never bluff a calling station. I was doing decent in the Super Thursday with about 1650 chips and 50/100 blinds when I decided to try and take a pot from a MP1 limper with KTo on the button. I popped it to 350 and he called. The flop was suitably raggy against a player I read as being pretty bad, so I made the standard continuation bet of ~400 more chips and he called fairly quickly.

At this point I should have been done with the hand, but the calling station lent me just enough rope to hang myself and when he checked a blank turn I pushed, he insta-called and flipped over AA and I was done. My read on the player being pretty weak was right, and I think I was okay to act on that read, but when a weak player calls your PF raise, then calls your c-bet you should probably be done with the hand. I could have gotten away with ~800 chips and had a chance to rebuild, instead I pushed into a player who was unlikely to lay down whatever he had while I had 0 outs. Not good.

In the one tournament I cashed in (the 100+9 on Stars) I was 7th in chips with 26 left when the following hand came up. See if you notice some similarities between how I overplayed this and how I overplayed my KT earlier. I had 88 UTG at a 7 man table with 400/800 blinds with 75 ante (I may be off on the ante, I think that's right though). I made it 2000 with around 22k in my stack. It's folded to the BB (who has me covered) who flat calls. Flop comes T75. He checked to me and I bet ~3500, and he flat called. His flat call could mean a lot of things there, and potentially I'm still ahead fairly often as A7/A5 and the less likely holdings of 89 and 86 call me here as well as any T and possibly 99/66. The turn is a Q completing a rainbow board. He checks to me and I put in 4500. He min-raises me to 9k. I have no idea what kind of impulse went through me here when I pushed and he turned over 77 for flopped middle set.

This was the second situation of the night where I had committed almost half my stack to a pot and then wasn't able to separate myself from it when I obviously should have. In both cases I could have easily folded and tried to make a comeback in a better spot. I don't think I'm being results oriented here because I believe in both situations it was fairly clear to me from the action I was behind and had no business putting any more chips in the pot.

We all make mistakes, and over the course of 9 tournaments those were my only glaring ones last night. I've really gotten to a point in my game though where I don't make THOSE mistakes too terribly often, but last night for whatever reason I did. I played solid poker in 7 of the 9 tournaments for the most part, but those 2 stick out as huge mistakes that potentially cost me lots of real money.

I won't beat myself up about it too much though, I've got a big weekend on tap and tonight is just the start. I'll be hitting the 75k on Dise, 100+9 on UB, and 150+12 on Stars for starters tonight and definitely doing the Friday Special an hour later. I'll probably add the 45k on top of those, and depending on how I'm doing the Empire Happy Hour. As usual, I'll add the 40k and/or 'Pearl' on Dise on top of those if I bust out of a few things. With any luck I'll be going strong in my early tournaments and won't add anything else on.

Since I may or may not post tomorrow morning before this, I'm also going to play in the 'Grand V' on PokerRoom (a $1000+0 500k guaranteed tournament) and the 1 Million guaranteed on Party on Saturday, so hopefully I'll be able to maintain my 'A' game for a long period of time tomorrow.

-Rizen