Anted Up In Amsterdam -- Part I

I was hoping my form had turned the corner after getting a decent run in the London EPT, but unfortunately it seems to have been a false dawn and things have returned to normal.

I’m well aware that I’ve been lucky overall over the course of my poker career and I shouldn’t really get annoyed about the way I ran this year, but it’s still a bit depressing.

I was pretty hopeful going over to Amsterdam. It’s a great place with a great card room, and the tournaments are much better value than the likes of the _EPT_s.

I never really got going in the main event and I’m pretty annoyed with myself about the way I went out. I virtually never tilt in tournaments but I tilted in this one.

I hadn’t really hit a flop in the first five levels which was getting a bit frustrating, but I still had around my starting stack when I was dealt A-10 in the big blind and called a raise from a pretty loose player in mid-position.

I check-called the A-J-2 flop thinking I was probably good, but not liking my hand enough to want to get a lot of money in at that stage. I liked it a bit more when the 10 came on the turn, and I went for the check-raise, which he called. I was pretty sure he wasn’t slow-playing a big hand and was just hoping a blank came on the river so I could squeeze another small bet out of him.

The river was a J, rendering my 10 pretty useless and meaning he’d just gotten lucky if he had A-K/A-Q or J-K/J-Q, all of which I thought were in his range. I still thought there were a lot of hands I could beat though, so I checked, intending to call if he bet.

He checked too and showed A-5 meaning that he’d been drawing to three cards to split the pot. I’d have been up to 19K if I’d won that pot or even possibly more if I’d got a blank and been able to get another bet on the river, but instead I was left on around 15K which by this stage was becoming a little bit short.

The next big pot I played was pretty unlucky too. The guy to my right had played very few hands and I could only remember him raising pre-flop a couple of times the whole tourney. The only hand he’d raised that had gone to showdown was A-K, so when he raised in early position I decided to be a bit more cautious with my J-J and just called.

The J-10-8 flop (with 2 hearts) looked like the nuts to me, as from everything I’d seen so far it didn’t seem possible he could have Q-9 or 9-7. He had fewer chips than me and we were able to get all-in on the flop with about four bets.

I thought the worst case scenario was that he had A-K/A-Q/K-Q hearts and I’d only be a smallish favourite. Apparently I’d been too quick to rule out the Q-9 though…

That left me very short and I struggled through the last couple of levels without making any progress. On the last hand of the night I had about 1/5th of the average and stuck in my remaining chips with 6-3 suited after an early raise.

I knew it was highly unlikely to get through, and I was just trying to get lucky and come back with a semi-workable stack that would give me a shot on day two. I knew this would be the last big tournament that I would play for a while and didn’t want to be trying to scrape into the money with a short stack, but I still should have come back the next day and found a better spot to gamble. Really I was just a bit tilted after the way things had gone for me.