It was the night of the underdogs.

It seemed to me that every time there was a race, the person with the worse hand going in won it; my aces got slapped around with Shermstick’s JT flopped two pair, my KK got hit with an A on the river (again, Shermstick, this time with A8). But then, I was on the giving end of bad beats as well; my 99 push against three other opponents preflop held up when I spiked my set. KK was among the hands that got busted. I also pushed with KQ preflop and won against AJ when I hit my king on the turn.

I don’t really remember how I finally got knocked out, but I do remember the mistake that made me lose the majority of my stack shortly before that. In the hopes that you won’t screw up like I did, or at the very least that I will maybe once and for all learn this lesson myself (I’ve apparently failed so far): Don’t play decent hands when someone else has raised before you preflop.

AQs is a decent hand. I like AQs. In many spots, it’s a hand that will win me a lot of money. But in the closing stages of a tournament, why the hell would I want to make a stand with it? Why didn’t I just lay it down?

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Maybe this time I’ve learned my lesson. Maybe next time I won’t spew chips with a marginal hand like AQs.

That’ll be my tip of the day, I guess: In the late stages of a tournament, don’t play AQ if there has been a raise before you.

As a slightly more advanced comment, I’ll add this: In the “How-to-play-blinds” posts, I mention protecting your hand by using the preflop raiser to force the rest of the table to call two bets cold, making gutshot straights unprofitable to continue with. While this is not incorrect per se, it is slightly misleading if you think that you’re only profiting if they make the mistake of calling two cold. You will be profiting just as much by making them calling two bets, one at a time (e.g. checkraising if the bettor is immediatley to your left). They will still have paid two bets to see the next street; in which order the money went into the pot does not matter whatsoever. However, and this is the point I felt I didn’t make clearly enough: You want to emphasize that they’re making a mistake - this is why you want to make it two bets cold. The reason for the emphasis is that the pot is already big enough to be worth fighting over; and you want to increase your chances of winning it. Learning how to win the big pots is a very big part of being a successful poker player.