Thanks, @DogsOfWar.
I would say that I’m not looking for sympathy when I post bad beat hands like this; I only seek understanding. How is it that I get in “good” and time and time again see the hand go south?
I think the rest of your analysis/advice is well considered and well-said, so not a lot of need to respond to it. I hear it, and I agree. I posted this hand not because I wanted sympathy, but because I was pretty split as to whether the shove was good or not, and I wanted to get some perspectives and consensus.
Outcome aside, I agree – at the time I felt like my opponent’s range should crush A8o, and I was surprised/relieved to see I had his Ace dominated when we flipped up. I only feared him hitting a flush board or his bottom card, and sure enough he hit his bottom card. Whoops, just my luck, once again. Oh well. I was very close to folding this hand preflop, too, but given the SBR and the rising blinds, I felt like I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to wait for something better, even though it wasn’t a premium hand to die on.
This thread started out about that hand specifically, but has taken a turn to talk about my tendency to tilt after bad beats. So I just had a game where I think it illustrates that this is perhaps somewhat overstated, and I’ll talk about it here.
First, yes, I absolutely do rage-tilt way too much. But it’s not predicated on a single bad hand. It’s usually 3-4 game-ending hands in a row where I had my opponent’s hole cards badly dominated and they somehow sucked out. Or when I get someone down to their last couple hundred and can’t put them away, and they come back and win it from me after I had dominated them for 20-25 minutes, by winning 2-3 hands in a row once the blinds had gotten big enough that it meant a lot of the chips were going in the middle.
Anyway, the hand in question. I woke up this morning around 4:30am after sleeping for maybe 2 hours, waking up from a bad dream. I check the lobby and see a guy sitting at a HU SNG 25k, so I jump in and we get going.
I don’t have history with this player, and I’m not too sure of myself, but he seems to be pretty good at winning hands and also at getting me to fold. I managed to get up over him, though, and had a 4k:1k stack advantage when this hand occurred:
Hand # 624625322 – I’m on the button with about 4k, V is in the BB with 1k. I’m holding QTs, and raise to 2BB, to 60. V raises to 210, I call. Flop is 44T, giving me top pair, but a worry about the pair of 4s. I don’t put V on a random 4, so when they shove, I read it as a bluff, and I call. V flips up A9s, they’re bluffing air, and I have them. Except they river an Ace, and I don’t have them anymore.
If I’d been in the midst of a 4-game string of games that all ended in such fashion, I’d probably get increasingly tilted. Here, though, I take it in stride. I absorb the loss, now I’m about 3:2 over him in stacks, so I still have the advantage, I just need to keep my cool and go to work.
I still don’t really know what I’m doing against this guy, I just try to play as best I can and hope that I have a good read on his line post-flop.
I hit bottom pair, 44s with 54s, and it holds up, I win 180 chips. I get KK the next hand, V folds the SB to me and I lose the opportunity to win a worthy pot. I get A6o and raise small, he re-raises from 80 to 540, and I honestly don’t know if he’s just playing weak raises like this for steals, or if he really has something, so I give it up. The next hand I get pocket 22s and shove it; he folds.
The next hand, I get 85o and pair the 5 for middle pair, neither of us puts in anything after the flop, and I win 80 chips. So the mood or tone from one hand to the next is all over the place – one hand we’re super aggressive, the next we’re afraid to put in a chip. I raise A7o, he folds, I get Q6s, and flop middle pair, 66s, check the flop, and he pots it at me. I check the Turn and he pots it again, and I call, probably a bad move. On the river, I shove, and he folds. The board ran out 36J78, so I guess I convinced him that I hit a straight, and maybe it got him to lay down top pair; if so, good. Or maybe he just had nothing and was trying to bluff me with strong bets from position. Either way, it’s the Play of the Game for me: Hand #624625842.
Now I’m back up again to that same 4:1 stack advantage where I was at when I lost the Tens and Fours to a river Ace.
I fold the next several hands: Q3o, 64s to a big raise, 75o, 83o, 62o. I get K9o and raise, he folds. A7o, I call a 2BB raise, and pair the Ace on the turn after a no-action flop, bet it, and take 160 chips. Stacks still at 4:1.
I raise T9o 2BB, and he re-raises to 357, I fold. I get T9s, and he raises 3BB to 120, this time I call; I flop a straight, 7-J, and check it; he shoves A2, pairs the Ace on the turn, but it does him no good at all, he’s drawing dead and I win the hand and the game.
Apart from shoving the 22 there, I don’t think I did anything particularly risky. I think calling with QT for top pair, TT44Q against a shove of the size that he had shoved is probably mandatory, and I would have been pretty unsurprised if he’d done that with a hand like A4s making Trips, Nut kicker. To get beat on the river with his Ace was slightly annoying, and not getting any action whatsoever when I had pocket KKings was too, but I didn’t let it upset me, I just played on and got to a situation where calling the shove was virtually a guaranteed no-lose proposition, got the shove, and took the win that he handed to me.
I don’t know that it means I played especially well, or that I learned anything; but I had a good game, I enjoyed it, and the outcome wasn’t bad, either.
The key is patience and taking advantage of your table image. You figured this guy thought you were tilting most of the time, so that is when you tighten up your range, because he is probably going to call a reraise/shove and you want to make sure you are ahead. In my opinion, A8o just isn’t good enough.
