Steel steals

I saw this hand posted on R.G.P. with the standard complaint used when one loses and bemoans his fate. The blinds are 2-400 with a 25 ante. There is a caller from early position. So the pot is 1225 to our Hero. He is in late position and makes it 2400 to go with 19K and change in chips. The blinds fold and the early caller calls the raise with a stack approaching 16K. The flop is 5c 9s Qd and the turn is 7h and we don’t care what the river was because they were all in at the turn. (This played out in a 10-1 on PokerStars.)

The flop bet was a check by Early caller with a continuation bet of 5200 by Hero which Early called. On the turn Early goes all in and is called by our Hero.

Before the hand Early’s M was 19 and Hero’s was 23+. Neither player was in need of making a play. So what do you think they held and who made the mistake in the hand? Where were the mistakes made? What hands would you think the players held? Who gambled and when and where?

Hand-wise we might think AQ in the early position. That could be the hand of our hero. Pocket pairs are a possibility with QQ being a real possibility in the hands of our hero who did raise and whose bet around 2x the pot. Could one of them have pocket 5’s or 9’s? That wouldn’t be a bad stealing hand for our hero in position with that AQ still a good possibility for Mr. Early.

Was the 5200 bet by our hero a continuation bet or did he make his hand? Would he commit a significant part of his stack to the continuation. The pot was 5625 and he’d like to take it down. What hand would you need to call his bet?

At the turn our pot has grown to 16025 and Mr. Early’s all in bet is actually 8050 which gives our hero 3:1 to call. He has 11700 ”” M equals almost 12. The call will leave him with 3650 ”” M=4.4. Did he have the hand to consider this call with or was he feeling pot committed?

I know you’ve been in this kind of situation. I have done so too many times, also. One of these players is going to either leave the table or be crippled to the point of having to play any two cards before the blinds hit him again. Neither player had to play the hand; so you’d think they did it with a couple of decent cards or a somewhat speculative hand that hit the set or such.

Well lets end the suspense. Early held 97o and Hero held 95s. Two solid M players playing Russian roulette. Neither ever held the nut hand. Both were betting/calling solid pieces of their stack with hands that were marginal at best. They got in a whizzing contest. They did it at a very inopportune time for both.

I don’t know how many times I seen similar hands play out or been the idiot playing it. I call it my boredom tilt. You are an hour plus into the tournament. You’ve either played well or got the suckout when you needed it. The easy marks have been ejected. You’ve got to think the remaining players are better than the average that entered the 10-1 tournament we are detailing. Yet we have two very aggressive players in self-destruct mode and for no real reason.

The final result is that two players were dumb but poker requires one to normally win the hand. The winner won a lot of chips but drew a target on his chest. Every player at the table has him in their sights. The loser was crippled and it would take a miracle to keep him from the long walk.

For some reason that I haven’t yet been able to define, I often see these scenarios play out shortly after a break. I seen them play out with me as one of the donkeys doing it or two players I thought were pretty solid players up to that point becoming the gamblers. The first couple of blind levels after a break somehow bring out these plays ”” normally in the first ten minutes. Are we looking at the leader board’s big stacks and showing some desperation or did the boredom of tournament poker lead us to this point? Like I said, I don’t have the reason down, but I watch it happen time and time again. I call it my boredom tilt but you may have a better name for it.

Keep it in mind. I can just about guarantee you’ll let it creep into your game sooner or later. I keeping beating into myself that it happens and to watch myself in these situations. But, it is still ”” for some weird reason — alluring.

Addendum:

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 7th, 2006 at 6:17 am and is filed under Journal, Poker Thoughts, Tournaments. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.