TalkFlop.com Blog

It was the end of a long day of cards and I found myself head’s up. This was a 15 player tournament so I was feeling pretty good about getting this far. I entered heads up on a very short stack against a pretty tight player who had been catching quite a few cards that day. I told myself that I’d play tight aggressive poker and try to outlast him. I could tell that he was getting tired at the end of a 5 hour tourney so I figured I could just play tight and outlast him. Finally after about 15 minutes I was getting closer to even (though was still down quite a bit) and I found my dream hand on the button:

I moved all in on the button thinking that he’d call with any pair, AK, AQ or AJ and I’d be in GREAT shape. Sure enough he called and showed:

I definitely can’t fault him for his call here as any pair heads up is definitely playable. I was feeling just great about myself until the dealer pealed off that first card:

What a dagger to see that third 8 hit the board. There’s a line in Rounders about how taking a beat hits you in the gut. We can talk about how “that’s poker” over and over again, but it never softens the blow when it happens.

The final board read:

Losing to boat is fine but the fact that I was chasing two cards after the flop was really what it came down to. I did pick up a few more outs when the Q fell on the turn but it just wasn’t meant to be. Would I play it any differently if it happened again? Hell no. Pair over pair is about as good as I could have hoped for in this case (OK. I suppose if he had a non-paired ace that would have been better).

See you after the flop!