Well, as usual, I played in my live Wednesday night 60$ NL Holdem freezeout tourney. Coming fresh off a 2nd place cash at the 100$, I was feeling pretty good. My first table draw was not spectacular (it never is at these events since at least 1/3 of the field consists of solid players, you're likely to run into a few at any table). I had the 100$ event winner at my table along with a few other players whose game I respect and some new faces.

I was plodding along quite nicely early on, made some money on pocket Kings and a few other good hands. I then decided to loosen up a bit early and I got myself in a few sticky situations with marginal hands forcing me to fold and give up some of my winnings from early on.

With about 1700 chips (down from the starting amount of 2000) and after losing a recent pot on a bluff (I folded, so nobody saw it was a bluff), the following hand came up:

Blinds 20/40.
UTG+1 Raises 100 to 140.
4 players call.
I am the BB and look down at QQ.

At this point, I had been watching the action make its way to me and surmised that it would be a good opportunity to make a "move" and pick up some dead money. The only player I had to worry about was the initial raiser. He was a new face, but had already accumulated a big stack and only shown down good cards. When I saw the pocket queens. I thought, "perfect" and pushed my stack into the middle. I really did not take the appropriate amount of time to reflect upon the situation. For whatever reason I did not realize that I actually had 1700 chips, I thought I was much shorter than that, and I made my all-in figuring that any other legitimate raise would commit me to the pot. When the dealer counted out my chips and announced the amount, I knew right away I had made a mistake. No matter what the ourcome of this play was, I had aloud myself to get way ahead of my hand and risk my entire tournament life unnecessarily.

The correct line (IMO) was to raise to ~600 and fold to a re-raise by the original raiser, or move all-in against any other player if they re-raise. Of course, by going all-in I leave myself no room and the only hands that call me are AA,KK, or AK. Of course, the original raiser went all-in over top with his pocket Aces and that was the end of my tourney. Luckily I had a 10% stake in the eventual winner and I managed to make some profit in the cash game.

I guess the moral of the story is the same old tired cliché, "think before you act!".

Labels: Live Poker, Tournaments