Everywhere you go you hear the tale. Some guy got runner runner and took someone else out. Some guy called all in with a nut flush draw and hit. Somebodies full house got beat by a bigger full house. Everybody remembers their bad beats, it seems in this day and age everywhere you go you can hear a tale of wondrous luck and misfortune. For some reason, as humans, we tend to remember the bad beats over the good ones. I have tried to concentrate this blog more on strategies and past "good" experiences, if for nothing more then to remind myself that playing no limit hold em poker does have its extreme ups.
Well this is one bad beat that I just have to share, mainly because it was an awkward experience that I should of been prepared for. I was called by one of my friends to come over and play cards with him and his roomates at his place on saturday night. I asked him what the buy in was and he said "$10" now this sounded pretty hokey, I don't play many low limit cash tourneys like this, especially at home games usually the minimum buy ins are $20. So i reluctantly agreed, I figured these people would be a bunch of fish and no where in the same league as me. And I was right.
I show up to 7 other people, 2 girls and the rest guys. Since it was there game they made the rules, winner takes all and it was a deep chip stack, something along the lines of $20,000 in chips. So when I sat down, I figured if I could take some good chip stacks down I could win this thing pretty easily by just playing smarter then everyone else. Well, as some would say, you just can't beat stupid.
The tourney went really well for the most part for being a single table game. Which is a table game I am very familiar with. I was getting just amazing hands and even finding myself folding 10Js because it was almost too easy. One several hands I would raise over four times the blind, something that would be a huge red flag for normal players, especially in early position. But in this game, everyone would call, making the pots pre-flop just massive. Several hands I would do this with pocket kings, and pocket aces, both raking in huge earnings for me. I played every trick in the book, check calls, check raises, early position blind steals, slowplaying made hands, the whole nine yards. I managed to take out 3 people in one hand which left the table pretty short handed and me with a massive chip lead.
Well after another hour or so of playing the last two people are in this home game tourney. Myself, and one other guy. We battle back and forth for about 10 hands, he takes a lot of chips on a couple hands and leaves us pretty even.
Well I get pocket aces and he has me by about 5000 in chips. I raise pre flop to four times the blind, he calls instantly. The board comes out, A 6 8 rainbow. Giving me a set. I bet huge, he calls me. Next card is a 9, making the board A 6 8 9 I go all in. He thinks for about five seconds, not nearly long enough to play out the hand in his head.
I turn over my aces, and he sighs, showing A7c I just about jump out of my chair because this is how this game has gone all night. People making just idiotic calls with huge raises from me, me showing the best made hand and them giving me their chips with the look of "who invited this guy" I was pretty excited, there was no way I was going to lose this hand, I was gonna walk outta this house with $70 and use it for a poker tourney at the local casino the next morning.
Well, as it seems, luck comes in strange and often times unfortunate ways. The river card in this case was a 5, making the board A 6 8 9 5 and giving my opponent the runner runner straight. Im not sure on the exact odds of this, but I was blown away at the call. Now normally I would be pretty upset on such a bad beat, maybe im getting numb to bad beats, maybe it was the fact that I just dominated a bunch of noobs in a game they knew nothing about for a measly $10. Either way, I wasn't all that upset about it, mainly because I had fun and at the end told them all that poker is my second job. Not like they couldn't tell that from the pwnage they just received. Either way, I lost, my opponent won and I received yet another lesson in poker strategy.
"No matter how good you are against a weaker player, sometimes you just can't beat stupid calls."
Keep up the grinding poker players!!!
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