Except when they don't

Don't what? Don't lose. What don't lose? Geeez, pay attention will ya -- flopped straights. You'll be wanting me to tie your shoelaces next.

For a change of pace I played a couple of MTT's last night. Lately I've been playing almost entirely one table SNG's, but I find these get a bit tight and boring early in the North American week. In the first one I was knocked out just before the first break when my QQ was no match for 44. So it goes.

The second one started poorly, when, after the mandatory couple of orbits of folding, I decided (at 50/100 holding 1200 chips) to push from the button over a single UTG limper. The small stack small blind called with 55, and I was happy to see both an Ace and a Queen on the flop. But, not so happy about the 5 that accompanied them.

After my next run through the blinds, I was down to just 470 chips at 75/150.

Oh how embarassing, just realised that I was reviewing the hand histories from a different tournament. No wonder I couldn't remember that bad start. On to the real story.

After the mandatory couple of orbits of folding -- oh wait, I said that. Anyhow, with A♦K♦. UTG+2 at 10/20 I made a daring raise to 80 over one limper. The BB and the limper called, and we saw a flop of 7♣4♦3♣. Checked to me, I bet 200 into the 250 pot, called by the BB. The thought of flopped straights was in my mind. On the K♥ turn, he checked again. I bet 350 and he pushed. I almost let it go, but decided that this smelled more like a club flush draw with the king, than a flopped straight. Certainly it couldn't be two pair given the initial pre-flop call right? Wrong. K4. Not even suited. But RiverStars was there for me with a 7. Donkeylicious.

Wasn't this supposed to be about flopped straights? Ok, ok ...

Just a few hands later I've (2730) been moved to another table and with the blinds at 15/30 find 9♣6♣ in the small blind. Six of us in a limped pot see a flop of T♠8♦7♣. In case you're still not paying attention, that's a flopped non-nut straight for me, with a backdoor flush draw to boot. So the pot is 180, and I'm thinking about what to bet. My normal bet with say 4 players in the pot would be about 120, but I might just increase it a little. However, muscle memory has done its thing and I've already typed 120 when I have this thought. Just a tiny involuntary spasm of the fingers follows, and I look down to see that I've bet 1200 into a 180 pot. Overbet for value indeed. I'm resigned to winning a small pot when mirabile dictu one of the limpers calls. Now I'm seriously worried about a better straight instead, but of course a set is also a real possibility. So, I push the K♦ turn (since I'm not going to fold), and mister K♠9♠ calls! No chop for him on the river, and suddenly I'm sitting very pretty indeed.

I bounced around between 5K and 7K for the rest of the first, and all of the second hour. Then at the beginning of the third hour I hit a little rush of cards and moved up over 20K. Again, I bounced around a bit, and approaching the end of the third hour (or perhaps just at the beginning of the fourth), sat midfield of about 35 remaining on 25K. With the blinds at 1K/2K it was time for a big move, or time for bed. Pocket 4's on the button with a min-raiser UTG+1 looked ok to me (and I had a reasonable read that this wasn't an AA or KK min-raise). He, with a stack that just barely covered mine, chose to call with A♠T&spades, but the wrath of Hoy failed to make an appearance, and a KQJ flop killed most of the suspense in the hand.

For the record, against my range here which I put at AQ+, 22+ he's a 6:4 dog. I think that those were almost exactly the pot odds. If he was also in “go big, or go to bed” mode (with more justification than me -- assuming hartford is the obvious one, it was 5:30 a.m. there), then the call is reasonable. He went on to finish 9th.