The One That Got Away

Poker is a game of decisions. Sometimes you make good decisions and sometimes you make bad ones. Many times the decision not to play is the best decision you can make. Unfortunately there are also times where you decide not to play a hand and it turns into a monster – that you let get away.

At the start of the hand I was by far the short stack at the table though I wasn’t in the “all in or fold mode” quite yet. We were four handed at this point in the night and I was under the gun. I limped in with Queen/Ten off-suit and the guy behind me who was third in chips moved all in. The big stack at the table thought for a few minutes and called and the guy to my immediate right folded. This left me with a pretty difficult decision.

One one hand I could potentially triple up if I put my money in the pot and won. On the other hand I was pretty sure that my hand was not good at this point and I’d need to improve to stay in the tournament. There was already one person in the hand at risk of being knocked out by the big stack which would theoretically move me from 4th to 3rd place (and into the money).

I decided to play it safe and fold my hand. As I’m sure you can tell, the flop was an interesting one.

followed by a turn of and a river of leaving me looking down at what could have been. Looking back it was a hand that would have tripled me up as the original raiser showed JJ and the big stack at the table showed AK. I still think that I made the correct play in this situation but it just goes to show that watching a flop after you’ve folded can give you quite a bit of heartburn from time to time!