Ownership

The poker gods are owning me lately. I don't know how to explain it. I've lost my last four or five MTTs all by silly, stoopid beats, most of which were significant leads for me with very few cards to come. I have been playing really great poker lately, and yet I have very, very little to show for it. And normally this is where I explain how *Insert Favorite Online Poker Site* is fixed, but in this case it is happening to me on pokerstars and full tilt, and even I can't believe they are both fixing things at the same time.

Last night I began with Mookie's tournament in the Big O Poker room on pokerstars. There were 21 entrants. I did very well at first, stealing my way to a few quick wins, and then busting a fish with my two pairs AQ on a flop of AQ9 rainbow. Can you guess what he had that he raised me all-in on the flop? JJ. If that ain't a guppy then I don't know what is. This got me out to third place early, where I stayed until making a bad play against one of the other chip leaders. I was convinced my 2nd pair was the best hand by the action thus far, and I was wrong. This dropped me down to last or second to last place of the remaining players, while others continued dropping out. With 14 players left (and me in 14th place), I was dealt AJo in middle position, and the guy right in front of me just calls after 3 folds start off the preflop betting. I read him for a low ace, and seeing my AJ, I figure this is a great situation for me to double up. So I move in, figuring he will call with his big stack almost regardless of what I have. I'm right, he calls, and flips over....A7. I'm styling. Then this:



Whaddya say IGHN? Thank you for owning me, Zeus, thank you for owning me, Hera.

Meanwhile, at 10pm ET I decided to use one of my easily-won $26 tokens on full tilt to play in the nightly 17k guaranteed tournament. I start off great, make a great read and am quickly up in the 2000 chip area. A few hands later I bust a player who moved in on my AK with his AJs (I love people who regularly call raises with AJ) and I'm well into the top 10% of the tournament's 787 entrants. I can tell this is going to be a good tourney for me, I can feel it in my bones. I'm thinking what kind of stereo system I'm going to buy with my share of the 17k.

Then an interesting thing happened. I am dealt AQs in the cutoff, with blinds of 20/40. It's folded all the way around to me, so I raise 3x to 120, hoping one of the blinds might put me on a steal and not a solid, playable hand like I have, and maybe play back at me where I can reraise him back again after much fake deliberation. The SB folds, and the BB just calls. I figure the BB was just defending his blind, but hoped he had something he might be willing to play with. The flop comes A73 rainbow. For me, a near-miracle flop unless he lucked into two pair, or if he was slow-playing AK preflop, in which case I'm about to get smushed and more power to him for the deceptive play. My opponent checks a little too quickly, and I can see the thoughts in his head: "I don't want to talk about my hand yet, but do you have an Ace?" I check back, my thoughts lying back to him: "Nope, no Aces here. If you have a low one, or better yet a mid-range one, please bet me."

The turn comes a J. This time, my opponent thinks: "Damn you didn't fall for my slow-play on the flop, but now I definitely don't think you have an Ace, so I'm going to bet you out of this pot right now", and he throws 600 chips into the 260 chip pot. Now, while I might have been a little afraid that he held AJ (and had just turned two pairs), once he made that big bet, I knew he didn't have 2 pairs since only a fool would play those two pairs that fast on the turn. So here's where I figured this guy must have the Ace I'm desperately hoping he has, with a kicker lower than a Jack. As I review his betting, I'm so sure of this that I move in on him, because with his big bet I figure he actually does have a solid Ace, just not as high as my AQ. He thinks for a short time and then calls me and flips over his cards. I was right about what he had, and my whole setup in this hand had worked to mf'ing perfection. I just forgot one small fact:



The poker gods are owning me lately.