Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Good hands can kill you


Above: Harrah's St. Louis is the venue for the current WSOP Circuit Event.

I settled into my seat #1 Monday in the $355 buyin NL tournament in St. Louis. A guy arrived late and sat next to me in the 2 seat. He looked familiar. I try to remember players so when I meet them another time, I have a clue how they play. Are they loose? Are they sneaky? Are they a complete fish?

The dealer called him Bernard, and them I remembered him. It was this guy. He came in 13th in the WSOP Main Event in 2005. I had seen him on TV, and I remember that he kept a picture of his two kids on the table and used it as a card protector. He's also a columnist for Card Player magazine. Too bad he couldn't be on my right instead of directly behind me.

It turns out it didn't matter -- he and I didn't tangle. Twice I flopped a set, bet strongly and had one of the players hit a straight on the river to lose big pots. You don't lose money on bad hands -- it's the strong ones that do you in.

I'm not going to complain erm, at least not any more than I have already as I've been pretty lucky lately. Tournaments are up and down and you have to be willing to play for the long run.


Above: The Poker Room at Harrah's St. Louis.

Photos taken with my P&S.

6 comments:

  1. Looks like a nice place. Sorry you didn't win big. Maybe next time!

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  2. Kinda a relief not to have to extol your virtues again. :)

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  3. Bernard Lee, yeah...who'd guess there are any poker players in Mass.

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  4. Yep they can be the death of you. Of course the lack of good hands ain't real good either. Sorry Mojo, get em next time.

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  5. That's the thing - I've thought about that before and this may very well end up in my blog sometime. When you make money off of your good hands it's usually because you beat a really good '2nd best' hand...

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