Will I ever be able to handle the beats?
For quite a while now I’ve taken a really healthy approach to bad beats. I’m quite a logical and reasonable person really, (if you know me, and are laughing your cock off at this, then just go with it please, honest I am really!!) Anyway, as I said, I really thought I had bad beats down as I was playin a lot of cash poker, even gone through a 7 buy in downswing with ease etc. I took it, I laughed, I thought, you fools, you will pay, bow before my superior TAG style….and I carried on winning nicely.
Then I decided to start playing MTT’s again…..
Now, I’ve been playing well recently, the best I’ve ever played. I only play micro MTT’s for $5-$10 a pop with fields ranging from 400-1000+ and I must say that I’ve been doing well. I’ve mastered the re-steal (almost) and thanks to an excellent article by Kev Stevens, my C-Betting and C-betting defence has been good, so I’ve cashed in nearly every single one (for a total profit of about $8). Before I start moaning I’ll give you my view on tournaments as I see it at the moment.
Recently, I have cruised into the pay spots with double the average stack in every tournament. This stage of a tournament is the best part of poker in my opinion (bar possibly the final five spots, but that’s debatable). If you’ve got a stack here, you’ve got to make moves and accumulate, but not donk off your chips. You need to know who to attack and when. There will be a good mix on your table of one or two good players, a couple of mid stacks who have no concept of strategy and will be blinded away or get lucky, some short stacks who will shove at every opportunity, and probably some luckbox with a big stack, plus a couple of lunatics who think they’re playing snap online or something. Now, here, you can do anything you want, sit back, attack, play weak, play aggressive, the poker world is your oyster.
I could go on all day about various situations but if you ask me, being in control of your poker when a poker tournament is at its crucial stage is the best thing there is. This is about the only time I can play online poker at a single table and actually enjoy it. Cash poker is the bread and butter of online poker, but late stage tournaments are your fillet steak.
So, where was I? Oh, yeah, so I’m ace at poker and everything is great, and the birds are singing, and Rachael Stevens is waiting downstairs with nothing but a big black Mac on and then it happens…the river.
I can handle, losing 60/40’s with ease (they hurt really). I can just about take 75/25’s when they hit the flop (I wince but I don’t cry) but recently I’ve been rivered 3 or 4 times on the bounce and to be honest, I’d forgotten how painful it is. Last night was a perfect example, apologies for a bad beat moan but here it goes. (For those not interested in bad beat stories then please ignore the bold text below. There will be a brief summary afterwards.)
I’m in the BB with the second biggest stack on the table and get bullets, could life get any better? The big stack is UTG+1. He’s been super aggressive and raises to 3* the BB as he has with most unopened pots.
I’m putting him on a mid pair+, maybe some paint, maybe an ace, and it’s folded round to me. All I want here is to get my stack in, Blinds are something like 500/1000, I’ve got about 25k and he’s got about 40k. If I can get my stack in here, I’m in the top spots.
I make a 3bet from the BB like a defence to 9k. I don’t want to shove cos I want my stack in, and he’s too aggressive to fold to a raise, but won’t call a shove with his likely range. I raise he calls.
Flop is something like K 8 5 rainbow. Now he’s bet every flop, the pot out there is about 18.5k, I’ve got about 11k behind which looks like I can fold if he represents (or bets) the K. If I check, he’ll bet and be committed to call. I check, he bets about 10k and I’m all-in, he calls. He Has Q9 of hearts!!!
Runner runner hearts and I’m out, it hurt.
If you skipped the above, I got it all-in on the flop late in a tourney with AA and my opponent hit a runner-runner flush, so…..
Now you’ll know this feeling cos I’ve been getting it a lot recently. You can see the river come before it hits. I don’t want to look but I’ve got to. Its like is destined and there’s nothing you can do. I’m sat there in disbelief and sort of make this weird sharp exhaling sound like “ Hooo”, like I’ve just been stabbed in the wrong en with a marrow. I analysed this hand after, and thought, “Maybe I should have been stronger pre flop and took it down, I got greedy”. I thought, “Well, you checked the flop, hence letting him in, if you bet he’s out of it” and tried to criticise my own play (you have to do this to improve). But realistically, I knew where I was, I got it all-in how I wanted, as a huge favourite and that’s all you can do.
Five minutes later and I’m quite embarrassed at getting upset over poker, after all the ‘it will even out, blah, blah, blah’ bollocks that I’ve been spouting for the last few months. To summarise, I love tournament poker, but I’ve just got to accept that I will never, ever, ever be able to handle the beats that come with the territory.
(Excellent thinly veiled bad beat post imo J)
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Well said
Happens on cash too
That fckin Marrow hurts lol