The Irish Winter Festival Part III

My first and pretty much last hand of Day 2…

Ok, I can't hide from the nightmare any longer, so here's what happened…

As I said in my last post, it was the very first hand that I sat down to, and the blinds were 400/800 with a 100 ante. I was in the big blind (BB) and with no action around to the small blind (SB), he completed the bet. I look down at 8-high (a monster, I know!) and rather than checking my option here, I decide to raise. Take no prisoners I say.

Quick point: I'm going to give you a glimpse inside the mind of a crazy man (me) and tell you what I was thinking.

If this lad has a hand to begin with, he probably would have at least put in a small raise, considering that day 2 had only just started and typically most people like to get in to some kind of groove before getting tricky with a big hand in a blind-on-blind scenario. So I trust my read and rule out the big hand, and by raising here I'm sure to take down the pot and we'll be on to the next hand. So with 2,500 out there (9 antes: 900, BB: 800, and his completed bet: another 800, equals 2,500), I raise a nice healthy pot-sized bet, thinking that it would put an end to it. But for some reason this guy had other ideas and elected to call.

Ok, that wasn't exactly in the plan, but it did occur to me that if for some reason I had misread the situation, and this bloke did have a big hand, he would certainly have to reraise me at this point (which he didn't) as there would be enough in the middle to justify such a play, and not to mention – does he really want to play a big pot out-of-position to a lad who has him covered? After all, it is believed by most that if your hand is indeed good enough to call a raise with out of position then why not take the lead to begin with and raise yourself? At least then you extract some information as to the strength of your opponent's hand by what he or she does next.

So what can he have then? Hmmm, possibly a Q-9 range, or connecting cards maybe? I got the impression that he was a bit pissed off with my raise and was just being stubborn. Whatever he had, I knew it wasn't that strong. Now granted I've only got 8 high but keep it a secret will ya!

Anyway, I know I'm probably going to have to hit this flop hard here or else I'm done with the hand – unless it's a beauty I'm fairly sure there's no way I'm putting another shilling into the pot! And then I see it … an 8 in the window along with its twin brother (another hiding right behind him). In case you're wondering – the third card was a king, with two clubs on the board.
All righty then, Hallelujah, and even the sound track from the A-Team all rang through my head – Big C had flopped a monster, three of a kind!

However, before my excitement had even subsided the small blind led out for 3k into a 5k pot, putting a total of about 8k in there. How can it get any better than this, you ask? I know!

Now, given that the fact that there were two clubs on the board and also the fact that I wanted to build a pot, I decided to raise it another 6k, so I made it 9k total. I knew there was no way he was going to put me on an eight by raising, so even more reason to raise! Before my chips had settled into the pot he picked up a chunk of his big chips and just fired them right out there. It looked like about 19k, which was a re-reraise of 13k more, as 6k went to covering my raise. This put a total amount of 36k in the pot!

Enough of this madness – he has half his stack in there, he must have a king, I'm not sure what he puts me on. I'm going all in! And … he snap calls me – I mean we're talking insta-click here!

I know for sure I'm ahead but how could I have misread the strength of my opponent's hand that much as he must now have top/top – the big ace/king … RIGHT? Surely?

Nope! He flips over king-Four off-suit. What? Yep, the K-4 – now the worst hand he could have put me on at that stage is another king, and if I do have a king I would have to have him out-kicked considering I raised preflop, I raised on the flop, and then re-reraised him again after he raised me! The worst hand I could have is A-K, possibly K-Q, or K-J if I was drunk, and therefore he would be praying for only an ace for a chop if I did have K-Q or K-J. But what do I care, I'm way ahead, right? Isn't that what I wanted anyway? Of course it is, but I like to try and figure out why people do certain things at the poker table. No law against that!

I'm so far ahead in the hand and with almost a 100k in the middle – I go for my usual walk away and I can't look.

The turn brings nothing – thank you – but the river brings one of the two remaining kings. Hard to believe that over forty cards in the deck were mine, with a mere two cards helping him. What ya gonna do? It left me with about 6k, and all I wanted to do was throw the chips away. A few hands later I was gone. The crazy thing was that the guy (who was now chip leader) got knocked out before the end of the day.

I did bounce back the next day in the €500 side event. It had 220 runners in total, and I managed to finish in fourth, which was some consolation.

We live and learn my friends – and then we learn some more.

God Bless,

Ciaran