T24

One of my favorite poker expressions is "Better lucky than good."

It about summed up this tournament for me.

Not much happened early on, I won a few tiny pots with position betting to stay ahead of the blinds; I lost just as many, frequently laying down what I presumed were second best hands.

The palpable fear at the table was not just my own. There are currently four of us who have a genuine shot at taking down first place and over three hundred bucks in cash. All of us contenders played timidly - while two other guys who are out of the running, had fun playing the roles of aggressive chip bully and spoiler sport.

With the blinds starting to hurt a bit, I woke up with JJ and went all in. The season leader in chips, who has lately been donking it up a bit, called me down with pocket sevens. (This particular call on his part wasn't that donkish, though I confess I did goad him in the chat box to call). I dodged his two outs, and was in a nice (third I think) position as the blinds were due to crank up.

I proceeded again, to play tight as a drum. Not that this was entirely bad, as I was pretty card dead, and the two spoilers were splashing it up in a rather dangerous manner. One of them in particular takes sadistic delight in rasing out of position with any two cards at any random time. He can be fairly easy to bust, he is predictable and at times it seems like he is playing with his cards face up - but on a night where he catches flops he can be lethal. Thankfully, one of his ill-timed raises flopped a complete blank, and his subsequent all-in bluff got called down by a middle pair.

The remaining spoil sport, who has missed much of the season by being overseas, is the king calling-station of the group but he makes up for it simply by being smarter than most of us. He also has a very good intuitive (I would even say subconscious) feel for where he is in a hand, it helps him avoid trouble even though he frequently only pays attention to his own two hole cards. His level 1 play, combined with his instinctual gifts, pretty much mean he either gets busted out early, or is a force to be reckoned with at the endgame. This night, he was the latter.

Though he did double me up by calling me with top pair big kicker against my aces, he managed to make many good reads and stay aggressive at the right times when he actually had nothing. His greatest strength by far in NLHE is his fearlessness when betting with garbage - if he ever learns to use it in tandem with position, he will be absolutely deadly.

On this night, it was enough that he kept firing against the four guys who want to win REALLY bad, so bad that they were timid about looking up the bully.

I managed to outlast my tricky nemesis from last week, he played with supreme passivity - only limping pre-flop, only raising with the nuts or close to it. Easy to dodge, easy to bully.

As I mentioned, the season leader has been off his game, and found himself short stacked most of the night. He would double up, only to lose it with a second best pair or busted draw.

The fourth player, who is last in points, but still has a mathematical decent chance at taking it all down (especially if the three in front of him bust out first next time) found his usual aggressiveness late in the game - and it wasn't enough to save him. He used all-in pre-flop moves effectively, until he ran into the chip leader (spoiler boy) and got hammered.

I managed to hang on to finish in second place; and even though the leader had me under almost a 5 to 1 chip lead, I honestly still felt really good about my chances.

Then his deck ran hot, and mine ran cold. He moved all-in three times in a row, and I KNOW that he had premium cards the first two times. The third time I looked down at a baby ace, pinched my nose and called. He had A9. That's poker.

I made a mistake though, I was not the aggressor, I was the CALLER.

Everything I've read, and in just about every serious poker discussion I've had with people - they all say the same thing. Give yourself two ways to win - they can fold or your cards can hold up. If you are a caller, you cut your ways to win in half. It was a big mistake on my part to be the caller with less than a better than average pair of cards. True, the blinds were huge - but next time I vow to be the one raising - not the one calling down.