UberBOO

UberBOO to me last night. In the midst of donking in two other tournaments and losing one to a ridick bad beat (wtf else is new, pokerstars?), I really did one of my (least) favorite things in the WWdN Not tourney last night at 10:30pm ET. I don't know why I (dis)like these particular moves of mine so much, but I really hate love showing them up here for everyone to see what kind of a donk I can really be sometimes after getting effed enough by pokerstars (and full tilt, and party, don't get me wrong).

So here's the setup. WWdN Not started at 10:30pm, and I jumped in at like 10:28 as I had been out to dinner with some old friends from my Boston days who were in Manhattan to visit. Long story short, I think this was like the second hand of the entire tournament. I'm in the BB and I get dealt AQo. Hacker raises it up 4x from 2nd betting position, and CC cold calls the raise around back. In the BB, I'm thinking why not go for a big steal here -- I have a playable hand, one that should be at least a race against most of the hands that Hacker could be playing here. I had Hacker on a good hand, and figured CC would fold to a big reraise from me after just calling the 80 chip raise from Hacker on the first time around preflop. And I figured I could set my image up early for the night by taking a pot away with not such a great hand. So I bump it to 500, a third of my 1500-chip starting stack in this event.

Caution: Kids, do not try this at home. This was not a good play. Period. No excuses. A solid player raised it up 4x preflop, and someone had already trailed in for the 4x raise in back. Making this move with AQ was extremely ill-advised, because odds were high that at least one of my opponents already had me beat, either with AQs, AK or with a small pair. It may have been a fairly close race, but in general, the late position call from cc is really what made this a bad play on my part. Nevertheless, I was feeling donkish, having already started the 10:15pm ET Rebuy Madness tournament on stars and watching people move in with 83o, 79o, etc. in desperate attempts to amass a stack early, and so maybe that was the reason, I don't know. I bumped it big, trying to represent a really large hand and I figured Hacker was the only guy I had to worry about.

Turns out, I was right. Hacker almost immediately bumps it up again to allin:



CC smartly is outta there before I can even process what Hacker's re-reraise meant. I've played a lot with this guy recently, and really, this re-reraise from him in this position pretty clearly meant the same thing that most preflop re-reraises mean in this game: a big pair. Aces? Kings? I don't know. But Hacker has a strong hand here, no doubt.

Now, any regular readers here will know that this is an obvious folding situation for me. I do it all the time, and I almost never not do it. But, I've been getting creamed so hard lately on stoopid 2-outers and river pulls, that last night I let that get to my head. I talked myself into calling an allin bet when I couldn't even really name a likely holding of Hacker's that I was beating right now. I can't believe I did it. What's worse, I knew exactly what Hacker had. Look again at the chat in the screenshot above, which was taken while I was contemplating Hacker's allin reraise, and you will see me typing into the chat what I was guessing Hacker was holding. I figured Hacker had a big pair, but AA and QQ weren't likely since I held one of each in my hand. So I figured it was probably KK, in which case I was basically drawing to three Aces or some unlikely straight possibilities. Anyways, so there is me predicting he has KK, and then I went and called it anyways:



Uberboo to me.

This bonehead play is a very important concept that all of the pros at least mention in their books and teachings. Often when contemplating a big call in a big spot in a hand, it is useful to figure out what hands your opponent is likely holding, and which you can beat. In this case, I failed to do this very basic step for any skilled poker player. I mean, Hacker is solid. He's just not in my experience the type of guy who re-reraises allin here with the Hammer. I would do that if I had a weak read on someone. Hacker would not in my experience. The allin reraise almost had to mean a high pair. Possibly AK, in which case I was also dominated. Basically, I called here with AQo, against a guy who almost certainly had AA, KK, QQ, or maybe AK, or I suppose possibly JJ, but even that is getting a bit unlikely I would say. My AQo was behind every single one of those hands. I might like my big preflop raise with the AQo, because at least there I had substantial fold equity if neither of these guys wanted to play a big hand with whatever they were holding in the pocket. But once Hacker had put me allin, there was no fold equity for me, so calling here is for all the marbles. What did I think he had -- AJ? Re-reraising allin preflop with AT? I don't think so. But last night, I didn't think at all. I just reacted, letting my play and the bad beats I have been suffering online of late get me to make a donkey call.

Hacker, nice bet. Way to use the 4x preflop raise to keep your AJ hands indistringuishable from your KK hands. And I also like your move of putting me to the test right there preflop with your KK, after I had already committed a third of my existing stack. Only pocket Aces or a true donkey would have called that bet. Luckily you found the latter last night.

And double congrats to Waffles, who will be a member of my 3-man last longer team along with DuggleBogey, as Waffles managed to return to his winning ways last night and take down the WWdN Not for his first blogger tournament win in a couple of weeks at least.



If Waffles is back in da house, we're all going to be looking over our shoulders at these events for a while. But congrats to you man, and keep winning in those cash games too. Though I do miss the hand histories with the 35o and the 24o's. Send some more of those my way, just don't play them in the DADI event so we can win our last longer with the three DADI hosts.