Are you kidding me?

My streak of poor luck/play continues at my own table. In the first tourney last night, I played tight and conservative. I pushed one or two hands, and was able to take blinds when I needed it. Then I got cute. Blinds were 200/400 and it folded around to me on the button. I had J5o but I tried to make a blind steal. I raised to 1000. Brian folded in the small blind and Paul R. said, "Because I respect you...I'm all in". He only had 300 more so I call. He has KK. What a bad time to make a steal! It was a fine play otherwise, although I might not have made it if I had known Paul only had 900 behind him, making him practically pot committed with any two cards. I was in the 10th seat and Paul was in the 1st seat so it was hard to see his chip stack. I'll pay more attention next time.

The next hand, I have JJ, and I push all in over a raise from Joel R. (new player). He calls with AK and I flop a J to win a race (lo and behold). However, since I doubled up Paul, I was in much worse shape than I should have been. A few hands later, I get AQ and raise to 1500 with blinds at 300/600. Thomas moves all in on me with a slightly smaller chip stack, but it would decimate me if I lost. However, with blinds at 300/600 and me with only about 2000 behind, I feel I have to chance it with AQ. I call and he turns over KK! Despite the reputation for KK as 'Ace Magnets', I don't spike one and I go out the next hand with 9s7s.

I don't mind running into good hands. But I was out on the *first* hand of the second tourney against The Slayer and a head scratching hand that really put me on tilt. Luckily, I suppose, I didn't have any more tourney to play after I was knocked out. I got dealt KhQh on the button and there were 4 limps all around. I raised to 225 and got a call from Paul R. and The Slayer (who was on the phone with his girlfriend at the time). The flop comes K72 rainbow. It checks around to me and I bet 450. I'd been reading lately about making strong moves with strong hands and putting your opponent to a tough decision. With this in mind, I made the bet, Paul folded and Matt came over the top for another 450! In most cases, against most other players, I'd think long and hard about what they could have called a raise with preflop that would enable them to hit something on a K72 rainbow board that would allow them to check-raise post flop. Usually, that would lead me to a set of 2's or 7's and I could fold. K2 or K7 doesn't seem to be reasonable and AK would have probably started out with a raise before me. But that's against most players. Against Matt, though, I have to put him on a wider range of hands. This is the line of thinking that led me to believe he had KT or K9. I moved all in over the top to try and get him to fold his two pair draw and he insta-called, flipping over 2d7d! It was the absolute last hand I had expected to see considering he called a substantial raise out of position. What's worse, of course, is that the EXACT flop came out that was going to get me felted. If any other flop had come out, say without a King or with a paired board, I could have gotten away from it. But NO, it had to be the exact flop to get me to commit my chips. Ah well. Such is life at my own table.