I have seen it all
Ugh. Having a bad, bad stretch in tournaments. Started seeing a bunch of last-place finishes, so I read up on Harrington again (toned down my aggressiveness), and started seeing consistent bubble finishes. Annoying.
The worst bit about this recent stretch is that I’ve mostly seen bad beats. Bad beats, I remind myself, are the sign of a good player: stuff your money in with the best hand and the only way you can lose is if bad cards hit. But the bad cards have been hitting. Like:
- I started following Phil Gordon’s advice and playing any pocket pair, as long as there haven’t been two raises. He’s right: the implied odds are insanely good, and there isn’t an easier hand to play in no-limit. Either you hit the flop and you’re pushing, or you missed it and you’re cutting fairly cheap. But when your 66 sees a K64 flop, and you bet about 2/3rds of the pot, and holy crap 53o calls, because there’s a straight draw… what can you do? Watch the 7 hit, bet, get brought all-in… mistakes.
- Same idea: miss the flop with 88, but the turn is an 8, and the third diamond. Again, I am forced to call an all-in bet before I have the chance to make one, but I actually saw that draw, and called with the intent of hitting one of my ten full-house outs. Oh well.
- 88 vs KK on a K82 flop: always a favorite
- QT vs AA on a QT6 flop: of course the final 6 comes on the river
- BB calls a raise with 65o… enough said
- These are getting fairly petty, so I’ll stop
It’s just the inventiveness and creativity behind these beats. (I’m leaving out heads-up beats, too, because anything can basically happen there.) But aggression is great: they can fold, or they can call with a worse hand, and that’s why we do it. On the other hand, sometimes they call with a better hand (it happens) and sometimes they call with a worse one, and win anyway.