The Mistake, The Nerd, and Losing without Playing

It was an interesting night and a little eye-opening.

I played this Mookie tournament and finished 8th out of 21. A fun tournament and I played well........BUT...........

I made a bad move at the FT thinking I could steal a pot with my short stack by trying out a stop-n-go, as I was way behind and needed to make a move soon. Too bad the initial raiser (Katitude) had an overpair and I was practically drawing dead.

This leads me to half the reason of this post. The Nerd spelled out one of the biggest issues in playing today.......The Mistake. It's what usually sends us to the rail or cripples us and it's almost always unnecessary. If we are fortunate in a tournament, we only make mistakes.....but The Mistake is the one that will haunt us and cause us to dribble about "what could have been" in our posts the next morning.

I'm not a good poker player, but I'm a winning poker player......marginally, VERY marginally. I don't preach, nor should I. I am a novice in a vicious, vicious world.

I have been making The Mistake way too much. And I think that if I truly want to take my game to the next level, I need to be able to identify the potential for The Mistake as it's happening and avoid it.

So thank you for your post Nerd.....I took it to heart.


Part 2.......Losing Without Playing

It's one of the worst situations in these turbo SNG's. You're in a "comfortable" position on the bubble but the blinds are getting big. You're hoping to not screw up, and instead are waiting for the shortstack to falter as it seems inevitable. But it doesn't seem to happen.......

It happened to me tonight in an $15 18 man SNG. With 5 people left(4 pay), I saw myself with 4000 chips and in third place. First and Second were way beyond us, both over 8K. The 2 short stacks had 1500 and 2000 chips left. With each orbit, I had a sense that things weren't going for me. I went card dead. Couldn't take advantage of position and I was caught stealing twice over the course of 2 orbits. At this point, I have 2000 chips and the other 2 had 1500.

Then one of the shortstacks pushes trying to steal with KTo against ATs.......but he hits his K and doubles up. Dammit.......

More dead cards.

Blinds are at 200/400 and I have about 1200 left. But the short stack with 550 chips is about to be the big blind, so I fold AJs to a preflop raise by the big stacks........

Then it happens again.

The short stack needing to call off the remaining 125 chips from the bigstacks big raise......Short stack has Q4 off and bigstack has AKs. Flop is good.......AT4. Turn is a 5.....River is a 4. And the short stack doubles up.

Shit.

Blinds will go up to 300/600 after the next hand. I am under the gun and the new shortstack. I will only survive one orbit.......and I get 44.

I push and it's folded around to the BB who throws in 700 to complete and show his 58suited.

Flop comes out nasty K77. Now he has 9 outs. Turn is a 6. Ugh.....now he has gazillions of outs.

River is a 9, and I am out on the bubble......losing to the straight.

I have learned to be aggressive on the bubble.....to take some chances that might give me an edge. I am not one to sit back and fold into the money......never have been. But this was the situation to do it, and all I could do was to sit back and watch my downfall happen without ever being able to do anything about it.

Sometimes the worst beats are the ones you aren't involved in.

Talk about helpless........