When you miss your boat

OK, middle stages of a 300 player tourney, 73 left, top 20 pay, you have 3500 1000 less than average stack, blinds are 100/200 and your UTG, you fold 10♠9♠, a hand you really wanted to play (instinct) but couldnt afford to commit enough chips to open the betting with a raise with the risk of being re raised by a later opponent, 2 people go ALL IN, and the flop comes 7♣6♠10♦ turn 6♦ and then the river 8♥ for what would have been a straight. they both showed AK for a chopped pot and you missed you boat out of small stack town, could have had 10800 chips, 3 hands later, your dealt K♥7♥ on button folded to you, you raise 3XBB and get called by both blinds, flopA♥Q♠3♦ and it gets bet and then called, so you fold, turn3♥ river 9♥ for backdorr flush, both players end up all in, with A5 and AJ, could have been 10800 chips or potentially more given teh last boat you missed.

Does this affect your game?
Does this affect your mental state?
how do you recover?
This is how 80% of my tournaments go, middle stages few chips (sometimes a lot of chips, sometimes had a lot of chips and just lost a stack) but non the less i always seem to miss my "BIG" hands, fair enough 910s UTG is not a great starter and should mostly be folded anyway, but teh boat was there and i missed it, it is starting to have an impact on my middle stage game, any advice will help

9 10 under the gun is probably the best hand you could hope for next to AA and 7 8 because you can call with the perfect hand to bust somebody...

My mentality in tournaments is to go get those chips playing lots of hands rather than protecting what I have. Sure I might bust out now and again - but the other times I can easily place in the money through taking big chiplead and dominating play as the table captain.

I personally wouldn't raise with a hand like K 7 because if you get called you aren't beating anythin and your hand is practically dead. If a K hits, you dont know if your good or not. Commiting large portions of your stack with rag hands like this is dumb in my opinion. If your going to raise, do it with live cards and hope you hit a flop. Any suited connector is perfect for a blind steal raise because if you hit - people wont put you on that hand and they will usually play back at you.

Those type of hands you mention are frustrating but you cant chase everything to the river. Try not to think as every hand being a desperation hand. Just play all hands the right way and take into consideration people and position.

You can't sit there thinking 'what if' when you're talking about committing your entire stack to chase a runner runner flush. If you're going to worry about hands you missed you won't be in the right state of mind to make the most of the hands you do play, so that's one thing you definately need to work on in your game. Don't worry about whether you won, lost or 'could have won' any particular hand. While you're playing concentrate on the current hand, and when you do go back over your results instead of looking at what you could have won, look at the decisions you made given the information you had and think whether it was the right call at the time.

In your second hand in particular you're focusing on the wrong thing. Folding the flop isn't a bad move here, it's a bad flop for you and chasing runner runner flush just isn't an option. What you can look at is whether it was right to call in that situation. Were either of the blinds short stacked, were they calling stations, did you have a history of stealing the blinds, were either aggressive, and had they seen you folding when pushed? In short, given the information available to you at the time was raising a good move with K7s?

Also, 3500 chips isn't too bad a position yet, you've still got 17BB's there and can afford to play your normal game. Don't feel you have to rush, maybe tighten up a little, but in general I'm still playing my normal game at this point. My stance when I start to get low is to tighten up a little preflop and to get much more aggressive postflop. I make sure I'm prepared to stand by my decisions and put all my chips on the line if I have to. Your stack is still big enough to be a concern to the other stacks, and it's amazing how much more respect the big stacks have for your cards when you meet their raise with an all in. The fact you're prepared to put your tournament life on the line for your cards makes them think twice about calling when previously they may have happily bullied your chips off you before.

Yes big stacks can afford to gamble with their chips and bully, but it's also a lot easier for them to lay down 500 or so when that's a sizable increase for you.

Myx