Life and Times of a Poker Addict

Somewhere through the years I have heard this line tossed about to make many a loser feel better. Doesn't usually work.

The other night I'm playing with the usual suspects and a few new guys joined us. I think I've been playing so much lately that I might be beginning to turn into a poker snob. More and more I feel like I am watching other players make stupid plays. For instance, New Guy #1 on the first hand of our mini-tournament gets raised $31 in the small blind and calls with 94 offsuit. Flop comes J94 and he cranks my buddy who has AJ.

So for the first hour and twenty minutes I see every assortment of 8 with 2-5 offsuit. I'm not even exaggerating except for the one time I had K8. Finally I start catching cards, eventually make a great read on another buddy of mine on a draw and I'm in the game. 2nd stack, not far behind the leader with four of us left, and the top three get paid. So it's me, New Guy #1, Motown (a fairly aggressive player) and Chris (I haven't played with him much but he's a decent tight player) is the short stack with about $120. Blinds are $4-8 and Chris makes it $40 to go. I look down at AK diamonds on the button and I decide to isolate on Chris, figuring he was raising with some kind of A, so I move all in for $274. New Guy sits there, laughs, and says somebody is gonna get busted on this hand, thinks for a few more minutes, asks for a count (he has $232) and then calls all-in. Motown and Chris fold, I turn over big slick and he's got AQ offsuit. Naturally he flops a Q but a fourth diamond comes on the turn so I've got 16 outs on the river, none of which come. KQ on the next hand, I move all in and New Guy turns over AQ on me again. Needless to say, we all know I lost.

So here are my problems with him calling with AQ offsuit:

There's a raise and a re-raise in front of you. So now you have to be thinking one ace is dead and you're up against a decent pair. Maybe even two aces are dead. So if you have AQ offsuit you have to put one of the hands on a painted pair or another big Ace. You know at best you have 6 outs and maybe as few as three. Your stack is covered, so you're putting all your money in trying to win with only 3-6 available cards (best case scenario). Also, top three get paid, so why not let the short stack get toppled without having to take that risk?

As it turns out all the Aces were dead, the deal was A9, AK, AQ, A10. How's that for some dealing?

So now you're probably asking, "Okay, you lost... so how did you really win here?"

The play pissed me off so bad, I went home, got on Full Tilt and won $500 in a tournament.

Thank you, New Guy, for making a bad call and knocking me out of the tournament in time to get home and win some real money. I owe you a beer.