Tuesday Poker Roundup

Tonight I played at Startime in Roswell, which has been my best place to play so far. I got there a little late and missed the first hand, but I quickly settled down. There was a guy sitting on my left that I've seen there before. He was playing the role of "angry black man" the entire time and trying to talk a lot of smack. I got involved with a fairly large pot with him with me holding pocket 8's. The flop was crap so I raised 1000. He called. Fourth street was crap so I raised another 1000. He called quickly. I was a little afraid at that point, so I checked after fifth street brought the spectre of a possible straight.

He checked also and I flipped over my 8's. He stared at it a long time and finally showed an AQo so I took down a fairly nice pot. During the next deal he looks at me and says "F.Y.I. I'll bust your ass out a lot of times on that kind of hand." At that point I pretty much put him on my idiot list. Even a pair of two's will beat AQ over the long haul, so he was just talking trash or doesn't know anything about poker odds. About 4 hands later he lost another large pot to someone else with a pair of 8's and you could almost see steam coming out of his ears.

I'm no poker expert, but betting on pairing up an AQ after the flop is worse than betting to a straight draw. You've only got 6 outs to pair up the AQ, which is worse than the 8 outs you'd have on an open ended straight draw. You've got to be ready to walk away from your AQ after the flop if it doesn't help you, especially if your opponent is betting 5 times the big blind like I was. I can't really talk too much since I lost several thousand in chips tonight from calling a couple of bets on straight draws, which is a bad habit I really need to get out of. Those are what kept me off the final table most likely.

Nothing else was very memorable the rest of the tournament. I busted out in 10th place, missing the final table by 1 spot. I was down to about 3000 in chips and went all in with A6o. I got called by the monster chip stack who showed A3o. He pulled a 3 on 4th street to send Hatch home for the evening. I can't complain. I got all my chips in with the best hand, just like Phil Gordon often says on Bravo. Sucks to be outdrawn, but that's poker.