My own worst enemy

OK, so everyone’s been talking about the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza in the last half of the month. I was practically drooling, long blinds and lots of chips equals lots of poker playing, what more can a girl ask for? But I have yet to pay more than $200 to enter a tournament, the only times I’ve entered tournaments with bigger buy-ins; I’ve won my cheap ass into it. After about 5 min of pondering, I used my two recent decent cashes as permission to take a day of work to enter the $340 even (which is one of the cheap ones, mind you) at the Venetian.

I’ve heard about people being alternates for these events, so I decided to get there early enough so I don’t have to stand around waiting for someone to get knocked out. Lord knows, I’ll be nervous enough, let’s not add waiting for a seat to the mix!

Tournament started at noon, I got to Venetian at around 10:20. You gotta give it to me, if I say I’m going to be early, I mean it. So there I am, all dressed up and ready to play and about 90 minutes to kill. No way I’ll sit down at one of the cash tables, I’m in tournament mode and don’t want to kill that vibe. Quick call to Tammy, who indicated that she might be coming out to play as well - she’s stuck in traffic but on her way. Great – nice to have someone around who can listen to your bad beat stories.

In the mean time, my stomach had a mind of its own. Doesn’t matter if I play a $40 or $340 tourney, I can always count on numerous nerve-induced bathroom runs before play starts. I practically have my own stall in every casino I play. Yeah yeah TMI, I KNOW!

Tammy got there shortly before play started and we’re off to our seats. Now, this is about 3 weeks ago, I don’t remember many of the hands, but a few stood out. Early on I got a couple of good hands that held up and before long I’ve gain quite some chips. Had about 10K (after starting with 7K) when this hand came up. Young guy with iPod, sunglasses, baseball hat and a gum-chewing ability that would put Britney Spears to shame, came to our table a couple of minutes before and up to that point, he seemed to be have seen every flop. He limped in UTG, one more limper and I call on the button with Kd2d (yes, I do that some times, mixing it up is what I believe my excuse is). Flop came K-high, two diamonds – BINGO! Now if you know me, you’ll know that’s a dream flop for me. Top pair with flush draw (prefer nut flush draw, but I’ll take this one too). Check to me, I bet to get some money in the pot, because at that point I’m convinced my K is good too and my flush is probably on the way, right? Blinds folded and UTG guy sat back, thought about it for a sec and announced ‘ALL-IN’. Crap!! Now what? Other guy folded and I started debating with myself. Did this kid limp in UTG with the intention of re-raising if someone should raise? Did he flop two pair? I can’t remember the exact amounts, but I do remember that making the call was a significant amount of chips and if I would have lost the hand, I would have been back to around starting chips. But I just couldn’t convince myself that he had a big hand, I just couldn’t. And after all, I have top pair and a flush draw, it’s my dream come true!!!!!! Usually I will look for reasons to fold, on this hand I was definitely looking for reasons to call. And somehow I found some; I said “OK, I’ll gamble, I’ll call” and flipped over my hand. And I was right! He turned over K7o, but was quite happy to see my K2, not so happy when he noticed the flush draw. Turn – blank; at that moment I felt like using a life-line to call Jerry Yang and ask about the praying thing, and then BAM!! – most beautiful card, 7d – hit the river. Kid grabbed his iPod and stormed off while I raked in all his chips.

At the break I met up with Tammy, who just went out after being crippled by probably the donkiest(I just invented that word) call ever. She flopped a full house with pocket 9's, reraise the preflop raiser all in, he called with KJ. He had nothing but two overcards on a paired board. Perfect, right? Yeah right. Runner runner Kings and he got a bigger boat. Now if that's not a bad beat, then I don't know. That was just sick.

From there on I just couldn’t miss. Twice my pocket Jacks flopped a set and I got paid off both times, I had AA twice, once against KK which resulted in another tower of chips added to my stack.
By the time we were down to 65 players, I had probably one of the top stacks in the tournament and was playing well (by my standards, might I add). Once I laid down pockets 5’s to a suspicious raise – guy next to me with 10K in chips raised UTG to 4K, looked like he was trying to induce a raise. I decided to play safe and fold my 5’s and the other short stack called him. Of course a 5 hit on the flop, I would have won the hand, but instead of being out, he doubled up.
At that point this guy had about 20K in chips, and I had around 60K. He won a couple of hands, but somehow I failed to pay attention to his stack size. I’m usually pretty good of being aware of where I am related to the other stack sizes and making sure that I take that in consideration when making a decision. In my mind this guy was still short-stacked, and it still lingered in my mind that I could have taken in out, when this hand happened. I’m in the BB, he is in the SB. Everyone folded to us, I look down at JJ, and think YES- I’m going to take down this pot and hopefully take this guy out. When he said ‘ALL-IN”, I insta-called, because I wanted his chips in the middle, right? He turned over AK and off to the races we were. All was good until the holy river decided to flip me off with a stupid Ace. I was still not to worried until we started counting down the stacks. He had 40K now, and suddenly I went from big stack to short stack. I was devastated. I got moved to another table, our table broke – must have been 5 tables left at that point. I lost all focus and instead of get my head together and play my short-stacked game, which I KNOW I can, I pushed the moment I got a big Ace. I didn’t assess the situation and waited for the right moment like I usually would, I was UTG and had enough chips left to wait for the next round and found a spot. Ironically enough got called by JJ and I didn’t improve and I’m out. I missed the money by a couple of spots, and it was my own fault.

That’s the WORST part of losing in poker – when you lose because of a mistake YOU make and not because of a mistake your opponent makes. I beat myself up over this for days, but do you know what? Two weeks later, I did the SAME thing at a Venetian Sunday tournament. After fighting my way back when I was down to 1800 chips with 6 tables left, I did the same thing. I went out on the bubble, because I did the wrong thing at the wrong time instead of waiting for the right opportunity. You would have thought I’ve learned my lesson.

I hate this game I love so much!!!