Turn of the cards

Some nights there is little you can do to win. The cards just do not treat you right and you are knocked out of a tourney before you know it. In your mind, you replay the game and realize that except for maybe making a different bet to possibly drive out an opponent or keep them in the hand, there was nothing else you could have done.

That is how I felt after the WWdN last night. Two hands took me out. I believe I played them well. In one case, my opponent made a bad call and then hit the two outer on the river. In the other, I flopped trips, but my opponent had flopped a full house.

It was the trips hand that ticked me off. With the Hammer, I dutifully raised and the called the re-raise. Maybe I should have pushed pre-flop? No. I like to drop the Hammer as much as the next blogger, but I do not want to go down in flames with it. Wait, in this case, I did. The flop came 7 7 K. A Hammer flop! I check-raised my opponent here. He even commented that I have the hammer and proceeds to re-raise with A K.

This ticked me off because it defied all logic. He knew he was behind and elected to put more into the pot. Even still, with a flop like that, what am I most likely to be check-raising with? A set or a boat. The boat doesn't make sense since raising with K 7 is ridiculous. He had to be looking at a split pot at best hoping I had A K as well. Would I re-raise with something like K Q or K J? No. That is foolish. So it pissed me off that he makes a bad play and got rewarded.

That knocked me down for a bit. I fought may way back up until I got knocked out with the trips against the boat. MP decided to limp with Q Q instead of raising. They deserved to lose that hand instead of knocking me out.

It was quite disheartening as I felt I was playing a good game. I started aggressively by confusing Wheaton when I flopped a straight. He had check-raised me on the flop. I expected more on the turn and chose to confuse him by betting out on the turn instead of slow playing. It worked as he had to take some time to lay the hand down. It felt good to have him thinking I was bluffing at it. I had chipped up nicely until they did a table change on me and I ran into the bad play.

Now I will have to wait another week to see if the flavor of this tournament has really changed. I thought there was some really weak playing going on. That surprised me as I find the competition of the WWdN to be pretty good. It ain't a donkfest but there was a hint of it yesterday.

Til then it is back to frustration as I plow money into the peep sex token tournies, in my vain attempt to collect a bunch of those that I really do not know what I will use for.