Losing Key Pots
A disappointing couple of the nights down at the Loose Cannon. I played in two tournaments, and felt like I was playing well in both, building a decent chip stack. However, when the crucial pots came I missed out - one was a bad decision, the other was a bad beat. I’m not too disappointed, as at least I am getting into decent positions in tournaments, so hopefully a run of cashes will be just around the corner.
On the Wednesday, I had built myself up to about 7k from a starting stack of 2.5k. I then lost a medium size pot with 5 players left to go back down to 4k when the following hand came up. Blinds were 200-400 and I was in the Big Blind. It was folded round to the small blind, who put me all in! I looked down to see pocket 9s. I couldn’t imagine he would do this with a big pair, so I figured he had AK/AQ in which case it would be a race, but I also thought there was a decent chance he would do this with 77 or 88 (him being the big stack and just looking to bully). I called, and he turned over QQ. Wow. A clever bet on his part I suppose, as he disguised the strength of his hand with the overbet, and was lucky enough that I woke up with a hand.
On Thursday I again began strongly, and was just getting some momentum up, with my stack sitting at 7k. Blinds were 200-400 and Hugh pushed all in for about 3.5k from early position. I pushed over the top of him with pocket tens but unfortunately was beaten out by A5. The final table started pretty much straight afterwards, and I drew seat 3 so was straight into the big blind at 300-600 and I never recovered. Busted out soon afterwards pushing with 77 and being called by 99.
A busy poker week coming up now. I am hosting a home game on Saturday, which features some pretty wild and aggressive players, so the cash game post tournament should be fun. Sunday I am taking the opportunity to play the big online Sunday tournaments, because it is the bank holiday on the Monday. I am particularly looking forward to this, because I just haven’t had enough time to play online recently, and these Sunday tournaments, while featuring huge fields, offer the chance of a big payday if you get a decent run going. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday will be spent at the Loose Cannon, as I play the Better Poker event, City 100 and the League on the three respective nights. The week after that I leave for Newcastle to play in the UKPT, which will be a decent warm up for WSOP.