Out, but happy
Posted by Viktoria | Filed under Live Tournaments
I played in a €1650 tournament in my home town, Budapest, Hungary. This was the first time ever that I felt proud after getting knocked out. I think it is partly thanks to the Poker Mindset book which emphasizes that if you did it right, the result doesn’t matter.
But previously it did matter and I felt very sad even if I got knocked out with my AA in pre-flop all-in by AK (which happened more than once). This time however I just felt proud that I had a plan, I executed it perfectly and the showdown was great as planned. The little difference was only that I planned to get a maximum of one caller not two.
The hand went like this: I lost half my chips by the end of level 4, BB 200 and I had about 5k. UTG limped and I found 88 in UTG+1. I think limping here on our very aggressive table with the plan of re-raising all-in after a raise is a much superior play to raising. First, I get a nice amount of dead money in the pot that way and that improved the EV of my play. Second, 88 is very difficult to play from this stack oop if I happen to get called pre-flop.
So I limped. Sure enough a raise came from MP to 1050 and to my delight there were two callers from LP, plus one of the blinds and then the UTG player as well. So when I pushed my 5k in the middle there were already over 5k in the pot. The raise over-pushed his 7,5k and the UTG also called (after limping originally!). I knew UTG had AK at this point, we had been playing together for 4 hours by this time. I hoped the MP player also had a big ace which he did. He showed AQ and I had a 44% chance to quadruple up! This was the dream scenario for me and I felt very good about it despite the fact that the Q on the flop and the A on the river gave the pot to the worst pre-flop hand.
Anyway, I don’t mind, I think the plan was good and it also worked out, so I am happy!
