Multi-Table Tournaments - Frustrating!

Multi-table tournaments are, without a doubt, the game I suck the most at. I play cash games I win. I play single table sit and go’s and I win. I play a MTT and I end up donking off all my chips in some stupid situation, usually after I’ve gotten myself into what should be a good position.

Granted, the fact I suck at MTT’s is probably due to the fact that I don’t play enough and I don’t study them enough, it might also be due to the fact that I play very high variance, low buy-in games. I have to consider though, that if I can’t beat the fishy games, I’ll never beat the real ones. Anyway, I’m rambling - let’s consider tonight’s effort:

It’s about 10 minutes after the break in a $1+$0.10 tournament on Poker Stars, I have just over 5700 in chips and the blinds are 100/200 I’m in middle position and the action has been folded around to me. I look down at:

:Ks::Qs:

Which is an attractive holding so I raise it up to 600, the player to my immediate left (who I have a read on and would describe as a loose calling station - having called large raises earlier with next to nothing) calls leaving himself with a stack of about 3100. Everyone else folds and we’re heads up to the flop:

:6s::Th::Js:

Which is an excellent flop for me, I have an open-ended straight draw, a spade flush draw and two over-cards which may or may not be live. This a good flop regardless of what my opponent has and I have to bet, the pot is 1500 and I bet 1000 which my opponent considers, then smooth calls.

A call like this is strange, but we have to remember we are dealing with a loose player - a gambler. His call though makes me rule out holdings like JJ or TT and I’m 95% sure he doesn’t have Jx as he would surely re-raise such a large bet. There is no doubt in my mind he’s drawing, but to what? He may have spades, but I can’t be scared of the ace of spades here so what about the straight? What cards would he have called my preflop raise with? AK and AQ come to mind, but surely he’s not drawing to the gut shot? Oh yeah, this guy is loose, very loose. He’s not thinking about odds. So we see the turn:

A very interesting card, if my read is correct he doesn’t have a jack and since I bet on the flop I can bluff that I’ve got one. Even if he calls I still have all those outs to beat him. The pot is 3500 and I have 4100 left and he has 2180, only one thing for it. All in!

Which he calls! I’m devastated, he must have had a jack right? So much for my reads… well, we see the river:

I’m stuck with a pair of jacks, king kicker and he turns over:

:Ac::Qd:

He was on a gut shot straight draw the whole way, he was calling whether I had a jack or not. Heck, he would have called if I had two! He takes down the pot, leaving me with under 2K and out a few orbits later when my pocket threes didn’t hold up heads up against KQ.

So did I play this hand badly? Well if bad is losing most of your chips to a player with ace high then yes. But if you consider that I read his hand nearly perfectly after his flop call and put him all-in on the turn when he only had ace high then I played correctly.

However, if you consider that he was going to call any bet no matter what the cards and that technically he was beating me on the turn (about 70/30 actually) as was any ace, jack, ten or six then you’d have to say I played it badly.

At the end of the day my chips were in when I was behind and whenever this happens I’m disappointed. This was a MTT tournament though and you don’t win these things playing passively, problem I have is working out where to draw the line between aggressive play and stupidity. I guess I’ve just got to keep practicing!

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 4th, 2006 at 11:46 pm and is filed under My Poker Game, Poker, Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.