Finally, Success (Kind of)

Tonight was a moderately significant poker night for me. I knew the West Coast WWdN (sans Wil) was at 11:30, so I warmed up around 11 with a 6x12 sng on pokerstars, which I managed to win outright about 5 minutes into the WWdN tourney. Then, to top it off, I finally final-tabled the WWdN!

despite getting much fewer good cards than one would normally expect to need in order to do some damage in an nlh tournament. It helped of course that it was a smallish turnout -- under 40 total players I believe -- and I did play my few good hands well. The problem, as usual, was the way I went out at the final table. I was in 6th out of 7 remaining players, with only 5 actually getting payouts mind you thanks to the low turnout, and I was basically in push territory. Which was good when I was dealt 10-10 in the small blind, and when I pushed I was overjoyed to get a call from the shortstacked BB, and even to see him flip AKo, because I knew I was at least a small favorite. Problem is that his King ended up rivering him a flush, and half of my chips were gone just like that.

Now this is where it gets particularly frustrating from my perspective. TWO hands later, I am dealt 99 in mid-late position, all fold to me, so I push again with my now very short stack. The same player one to my left calls me again, and flips...
AKo AGAIN! Twice I am dealt a decently high pocket pair in 3 hands at a final table, and BOTH times the same guy was dealt big slick. So he calls me again, and this time an Ace flops, and I am out of the tournament, just like that. Now I know neither of these plays can be called a bad beat by any stretch given the fact that I was just a 53% or so favorite on each. But, the odds of him winning BOTH of those races with the short end of the odds in both situations, those come out to somewhere south of 25%. So I call the whole thing a bad beat. And a frustrating one. Still though I am gratified to have un-embarrassed myself for at least one day in front of the blogger community, and look forward to repeating my final tableness in a larger WWdN next Tuesday at 8:30pm ET.