You know your day won’t be going well when you are dealt pocket aces in consecutive hands and are happy to only lose in the neighborhood of half your stack. How did that happen, you ask?
Old school players may remember a Southern rock band from the heyday of FM radio known as Little Feat. They wrote a tune about a love struck trucker who would “take the back roads to avoid being weighed.” I’m pretty sure interstates still have weighing stations, so maybe even you new school MIT brats see where I’m headed.
In poker, calling stations are fond of using the back roads, aka back door draws, to suck out big pots from strong hands. They’ll happily do this even in situations where the math says it’s unprofitable in the long run. For them, poker is about the moment. Tomorrow never comes.
So there I was, early in a 100K tournament, sitting on black aces in middle position. The blinds were 15/30. A pot bet was 210 chips. I made it 420. Everyone folded except the blinds.
The flop came 7-4-3. With 1320 in the pot, including the folded limps of UTG and her neighbor, I made the pot bet. The small blind folded but the big called, which put him all in.
I stared at my monitor. Did this person really call my 14bb pre-flop raise with a 56? He’d already lost a big pot or a series of smaller ones (I didn’t know which as I had just been moved to the table).
I checked his rating. It was in the 5000s, which for me was just on this side of ‘no, he didn’t.’ A5 or A6 then? That sounded more in his wheelhouse, so I shoved.
He snap-called with 55. That hand made sense too, although the call, with just six outs and your tournament life on the line, didn’t. Even with two bites at the apple, he was worse than a 3-1 dog, and when the turn came a 9, more than double that.
As I said, however, he was living in the moment, and that moment brought a five on the river. The backdoor straight didn’t materialize, but a set did the trick.
I gripped my head in my hands in disbelief, then looked at my stack. I was down to 935 chips.
The red aces were mine for the next hand.
“F— it,” I said aloud, and shoved.
Another already shortstacked player called for 425 chips with a suited K6. The poker gods were as disgusted with that call as I was and sent my opponent to the rail after giving him a hopeful six on the flop.
Let me just say at this point that I didn’t catch an ace on either board (not that I should have), but both my opponents’ hands improved. Another bad omen, that.
I pushed ahead with just under 1400 chips, but the omens kept coming. I wasn’t hitting the board with anything, and busted out fairly quickly.
The next three tournaments followed the same dead-end path. Repeatedly, I got chips in with the better hand only to be run down if anyone called me on the flop, the seemingly endless straights and flushes further augmented by the odd low kicker hitting for two pair.
In my day’s final tournament, I was set up for the guillotine in classic fashion. In the cutoff, I raised and took the blinds and limpers with a suited AQ, then again from the hijack with a suited AJ.
I don’t like raising three hands in a row, as I’m aware it tests people’s patience, leading to wild calls that somehow win the hand, but an AK in the lojack demanded another pre-flop raise. To my surprise, everyone folded again.
The next hand was A9d. I rolled my eyes. I couldn’t raise a fourth consecutive hand with the weakest ace from the worst position yet, so, dumbass that I am, I limped.
The A-3-9 flop perked me up. I raised pot.
Fold.
Fold.
Fold.
Only one to go and… Call.
The flop came a ten.
My stomach churned. With straight possibilities now in the picture, I shoved.
Snap call with 7-8.
To be fair, I’ve raised with that hand when it’s still the flop and I not only have the open-ended straight draw, but a flush draw as well. You’re a 56% favorite against top pair in that situation, and hold a 1% edge against two.
Here, without the flush draw to give him 15 outs rather than eight, he had just over a 5% chance on the flop and less than a 20% chance on the turn while getting only two to one on his money. In other words, pie in the sky economics.
My problem was it had been raining apple, cherry, and lemon meringue all day.
Naturally, he called and the six came to make his straight and end my day. For about the sixth or seventh time in the past four hours, my hands went to my head and I raged in disbelief at the injustice of it all.
I wonder if the Unabomber played online poker?
