Winning in poker is not an easy thing to do, so always take a win and be happy with it. If you are miserable when you win and miserable when you lose that is too much poker based misery for a happy life.
I played Tuesday evening in the £55 bounty (£25) tournament at Aspers and cashed for £90 with £75 in bounties for a net win of £110 for 5 hours work/play.
At the final table it all went wrong for me, one minute I was raising almost every hand, stealing the blinds and antes at will then the next it all got away from me.
I was second in chips when the Big Blind was going to go all in regardless of his holding as he had so few chips left. UTG + 2 made it 5K to go and I re-raised to £10K figuring he was after the £25 bounty. Unfortunately he re-shoved for 35K total, the blinds were 800/1600 with 200 ante and for 20BB I called it off with AQs after some consideration, only to run into pocket aces. Aces held although I did have a flush draw on river.
The next hand raised to 5K with J9s from MP only to be re-raised to 10K from the tightest player who showed me pocket aces when I folded. Next hand a tight player in MP limped for 2K and I made it 7K from the BB with A7o and got called. The flop came 886 with two hearts, I bet 5K and the MP player went all in for his last 21K. I tanked for a while before making the call with ace high and was pleased to be shown K 10. A ten hit the turn and suddenly I was very short stacked.
The final hand I limped 10 2 suited from the SB and the BB checked, I checked a flop of 10 8 4 two spades and the BB shoved. I called with top pair and he had J 9 for the open ended straight draw (OESD) and he hit his jack on the turn. I had busted in 5th place for £90 and felt miserable as there was £300 up top and I was shooting for it all.
Perhaps I should have flatted the AQ rather than min-raised as that was the pot that killed me. Maybe I should have stack preserved and folded I could then have just carried on stealing the blinds and antes.
The hero call with aces high wasn’t good as there were better spots to get my chips in and even when right you can still lose. I should have perhaps checked the flop and called a bet with my ace high, I think that is the better play although it does allows me to be bluffed but keeps more range wide.
All in all I played well, I banked a £110 win and although frustrated to once again fail at the business end of a tournament, I can’t be too disheartened. There were a few bad beats and a couple of more bounties would have made all the difference.