28
Luck, Both Good and Bad
I made it to day 2 of the first No-Limit hold ‘em event, and I was feeling great. I think I played really well yesterday and if not for some lousy luck and one lousy play, I would have been among the chip leaders.
The bad luck: I lost three races for about 10k each.
The bad play: This one was tricky. It was late in the day yesterday and I had about 60k in my stack. The under-the-gun player moved in for about 20k and I found Ace-King. I called. The guy who moved in showed Ace-King suited and ended up taking the pot with a flush.
I could write the hand off as more bad luck (after all, the guy against me had about 2 percent pot equity) but in truth, I don’t think I needed to play the hand at all. I was the big stack at my table and my opponents were letting me steal from them left and right. At times I was stealing blinds four times a round. At that point, I didn’t need to risk one-third of my stack with Ace-King. I would have been better off folding and preserving my stack. Once the hand was over, I could have gone back to stealing blind after blind.
When the day started I had 13 big blinds in my stack, which was about average. With that sort of blind-to-stack ration there’s not a lot of room for maneuvering.
Early on in the day, I got very lucky. I moved in with A-3 and got called by A-Q. I managed to double up when I hit two pair on the flop. That brought my stack to about 53k. Hopefully, the good luck will continue.
