| 13 Feb | Lucky big stacks, and lucky mePosted by PokerBarney on 5:11PM, 13th Feb 2006Permalink |  Send to a friend |  RSS feed |
Lucky big stacks
Why is it that big stacks are always outrageously lucky?
Picture the scene - 3 of us left from a 6 seater, one guy big stack, me and the other about even. The big stack has a 4 to 1 chip lead over us, and is being agressive (which is ok, I would do the same!).
However, he keeps making big moves and getting lucky - something I've seen more and more from big stacks on VC. My final hand - I'm dealt a suited AK, and he raises (as usual). I re-raise all in, and he calls instantly, turning over A9 offsuit. At this point I'm totally crushing him, odds are 73% in my favour. And of course, he flops two pair, knocking me out.
So why does it seem that players with bigger stacks are luckier? Is it because they can afford to take bigger risks that sometimes pay off? Or is it just because of the mental attitude of poker players - that we always remember the bad beats and never the awesome wins? Either way, it sure as hell is annoying being one place off the money and beaten by some monkey with more money than sense.
Lucky me!
With all that said, I did have a stormer of a hand in last night's Maxim daily qualifier MTT. 311 players started, with between 50-100 disconnected and never entering the game (As a side note, this sort of thing really irritates me - since table placement is random, one live player will often end up on a table with 8 discons. This means 16,000 free chips can be had in under 30 minutes. Bleurgh). I played textbook poker for the first hour and a half, being ultra tight and maximising my wins. I hardly played any hands, but achieved a decent stack of about 40,000 by the time there's 30 players left in. So, although I'm being cautious I call a suited A,10 and then spend about half my stack trying to hit the flush draw I flopped. Unfortunately, I missed.
So by this point I'm getting quite tired, but I've earned lots of leaderboard points so I'm happy to start flinging the remainder of my stack around. The very next hand is an offsuit A,10 and I go all in about 20,000 (average chipstack is about 10,000 and I'm placed in the top 9). One guy with 60K+ thinks about it for a while, then calls with a suited KJ. I think I'm in trouble, especially when the first two cards out are QA. Although I've got a pair, I've been rivered with straights too often for comfort. Luckily, the third card is also an A. Great I think, but still beaten by that 10... Incredibly, the turn is the fourth A, giving me an absolute screamer. My quad aces crushed his K high, and doubled me back up to 40,000.
From there I stayed in till the final table, eventually finishing a frivolous 5th. I could've made 4th or 3rd, but two of the players had gobbled up everyone else, giving them a 10 to 1 chip lead. It was all-in or fold at this point, and eventually I got beat fair and square.
The feeling of seeing those aces come out was great.. they just kept coming! That 300+ points means I'm still just in the top 10 overall - I had to miss a few games recently, and it seems everyone else did particularly well. I'm gonna have to play hard to catch up!
Bookmarks
If you enjoyed reading this post, please share it with others at these social bookmarking sites:
Del.icio.us | 
Digg | 
Furl | 
Reddit | 
Yahoo!
Blogmarks | 
FeedMeLinks | 
Shadows | 
Ma.gnolia
Scuttle | 
Simpy | 
Smarking | 
Spurl
