A quick word on endgame

Last night's $25/2 NL/Hold-Em $12,000 Gauranteed Tourney on Bodog was a delightful experience - I played with some "proper villians" who really could play some cards. There were about 1 or 2 wrong moves over the course of 200 + hands, which is very impressive.

I was fortunate enough to get 18th place, one out of the $150 payout, ending up only with $81.00 to show for my efforts.

The hand that essentially eliminated me was K10. Blinds were at 1000/2000 + 350 ante, I had about 26,000 in chips, and everyone at the table was somewhere between 45,000 and 10,000. The cards folded around to me, and I was in the classic "boy this is a bad hand to lose chips on, but its good enough that you have to play with position" type of deals.

Anyway, flop comes As Js 7c, two spades showing. I'm holding none. It costs me only 2,000 to see the turn so I pay it, and sure enough make my straight with a Qs of spades. There's three spades on the table, but I'm sure that if my opponent made a flush, he'd have either checked the flop on a draw, or bet it strong. Therefore, its pretty obvious to me that at this point I'm holding the nuts - albeit in a precarious position nonetheless. I bet half the remaining stack, about 10,000. To my demise, I get called. Had the odds swung in my favor, the call would have been huge -- I would've ended up aronnd 60,000 chips at the end of the hand. However, the river comes 10 of spades.

At this point, you know its over. No one would have called that without at least holding one spade to make the best possible hand (flush).

Checked down. Guy shows. 7 of spades, (pocket 7s).

The reason I tell this story?

For those who've never done online tournaments, they not only feature a lot of good players who make money playing (at the higher dollar levels), but they also feature some tough blind structures at the end that really make decisions tough. Did I make a mistake playing JQ to begin with?


Who knows.
Until next time...