2024 WSOP: June 5, Event 17 $800 NLHE Deep Stack (Part 6 of 8)
I make a big, bold move on DoubleVodka …10-10 versus a player who is giving off vibes of a much bigger hand … Losing an important hand as a 2-to-1 favorite … I go on mini tilt very briefly
Level 9
600/1,200/1,200
I have 9s-10c in the big blind. We go three to a flop, which is 3-4-10 rainbow. DoubleVodka bets, I call, as does the other player in the hand. The turn is a 7. DoubleVodka bets 8,000. Now, at this point I just have top pair, mediocre kicker. I decide it is time to make a move. I go all-in, which is a huge over bet. I am not concerned about the other player in this hand, who has played it very passively. As for DoubleVodka, I am playing the man and the fact that the cards hit my big blind range pretty hard. I am also playing my table image. I know that DoubleVodka thinks I am on the tight side. I also know that he does not think I have this move in me. I am certain he is going to give me credit for having a much bigger hand than I actually possess. He and the other player both fold, and DoubleVodka says, “Your two pair are good.” A few minutes later he says, “Was my 10 no good?” I tell him to ask me if/when one of us (much more likely me) gets knocked out. I have 67,000 chips.
I defend my big blind with K-10 to a bet. I completely miss the flop and fold to a bet.
End of level 9: 63,000 chips.
Level 10
800/1,600/1,600
I am dealt 10-10 in middle position and bet to 4,000. A player that joined our table a couple of levels ago is in the small blind and starts stacking chips. He is coming across as powerful strong. I have not seen this look from him before. He raises to 8,000. I actually considered folding since my read was he had something huge, but I can’t see folding to a min raise, so I call and I’ll see what happens on the flop. The flop comes Q-4-3 and everything on his facial expression is telling me to run away. He bets and I fold. I have 55,000 chips.
A little bit later I think I may have had the blinds eat away a bit more to my stack, when a crushing hand occurs. Swinger is down to 14,000 chips and he gets it all-in against me. I have Kd-Qd. Swinger has an off suit 7-8. This is only for a quarter of my chips, but winning the hand will give me considerably more room to breathe, while losing it will lower me to closer to the mildly uncomfortable zone. This is the kind of hand I have consistently lost in these key stages. I am ahead. I am a 2-1 favorite, so I am aware that I should not win every time, but it feels like I win these almost none of the time. Swinger flops a 7, I don’t improve and I am down to 36,800 chips.
This is the first and only time during this WSOP that I get internally mad.
My thoughts immediately go to an eerily similar hand I had against MsPolkaDot in a previous tournament. In that instance, she was very low on chips. I had her covered but I was not exactly flush with chips at that time. She got it all-in with Q-J off suit against my A-K off suit. Again, I am a 2-1 favorite. The flop hits her, I don’t improve and I lose the hand.
Damn it! It’s hard enough to navigate these big blinds at these levels. It is crushing when negative variance keeps biting me in the ass. This is what I am thinking. For the first and only time I feel unproductive self-pity.
I whisper to DoubleVodka, “This keeps happening to me.” He empathizes.
The next hand I am dealt A-K. I have 23 big blinds, so maybe (probably/definitely) what I do is wrong. I go all-in. My thought process was, if I make a standard raise, get called and miss the flop, then what do I do? I say to myself by going all-in I ensure that I will have five cards to try to make a pair rather than just the flop. I tell myself that if I do get called, as long as I am not up against A-A or K-K it will be a coin flip, and, if I win, I now have a very solid stack. I tell myself if everyone folds and I just take the blinds that is not terrible given that A-K is not actually a made hand yet. Or maybe I was just steaming. Probably a little bit of all of the above. Mini tilt, albeit very quietly. No verbal outburst on my part, just poor poker judgment. No good reason to play A-K this big.
The guy (I have not given him a nickname at this point) from the hand where I had 10-10 and I bet, he raised, I called and then he bet me off the hand post-flop recently now goes into the tank regarding my 23 big blind sized bet. He takes a long time contemplating whether to make the call. Finally, he folds. I win the hand. He says he folded 8-8, and he asks if it was a good fold. I say nothing. He says, “It was probably a coin flip.”
Poor decision on my part, good outcome. Don’t be so results oriented I tell myself. OK, I need to get myself together.
I now have 42,300 chips. I give some back when I am in the blinds and fold to bets given my garbage cards.
End of level 10: 38,400 chips.