One of my worst live hands (I think)

As you can see from the date of my last blog entry, I have not played any major events lately. As a matter of fact, I moved back to Germany and bought a small apartment here and was busy with the remodeling of the place.

Now that is done, and since we have a few casinos here where poker tournaments are being held, I decided to get back in my game. By the way, if you ever come to Germany and would like to play some poker, I recommend the casino at Dortmund-Hohensyburg. They have tournaments with buy-ins between € 30 and €120 almost daily, and cash games start at 18.00 h every day (mostly NL Hold’em and PL Omaha, usually €2,50/5,00 blinds).

Twice a year, they hold a bigger, 3-day event with a buy-in of € 1000 + € 100 fee, for which they offer loads of Level 1 (€30] and Level 2 (€120) satellites. I decided to play one of the Level 2 satellites and ended up with a ticket. Attendance was 75 players, with app. 25 rebuys, so that there were 10 tickets to be won, plus € 400 for the bubble.

The whole thing went pretty easy for me, doubled and tripled up early, thanks to a few real fish at my table, then sailed into the paid slots without any problems. Players were offering up to € 1000 to buy a ticket, so I thought I could give it a try in the next tournament a day later, win another ticket, sell it and pick up some easy money. I started out a bit loose, probably way too cocky after the previous day’s success. It was a bit of a rollercoaster ride, my chip count went up to 300%, then down to average, then up to twice the average again.

Here’s the hand that killed me

We started out with 5000 chips, blinds started at 25/50 but went up every 20 minutes. We are at 200/400 now, I am the BB with a little over 20 BB. The UTG player on my left makes it 900 and gets called by the hijack and the button. I have QdTd, and I have to pay 500 to be in a pot that already has 3300 chips in it, so I call.

The flop comes J85 rainbow. Player 1, who has about half my chips bets 1000, Hijack calls, Button calls and I call too. That was a loose call from me, to begin with, but honestly, I wasn’t playing my best that day. Good thing we don’t have a comment function here …. Turn comes a Q, the board is still rainbow and I move all in. Yes, I know …

Anyway, what happens is that I get called by all three players. The river was a blank and here’s what the other guys were holding: UTG: JJ, Hijack QQ, Button T9. On top of that, the button was the only player that had me covered chip-wise, and I bust out of a 65 BB monster pot. Wow – goes to show that cockiness is never a good attitude at the table. I thought I might have the best hand and everybody else was drawing when in reality I had the worst hand of all players involved.

Anyway, it is a lesson learned and I will definitely not go into the main event with the same kind of attitude. That main event starts on Nov. 25th of 2015, and as usual, I’ll keep you posted.