Online Casino Malaysia – especially pairing the two highest cards on the board – is a good hand. It seems even better when only one other person sees the flop. People have successfully gone all in with that or considerably less, but that doesn’t mean that it’s worth betting an entire stack with two pair.
I raised a few times the big blind with the king and queen of clubs, and one person called. The flop was a king, queen, and jack, including two hearts. The other player bet first, and came out with over 1800 chips. I was confident that I had the best hand at the time, so I re-raised and called the subsequent all-in bet.
Should I have been confident? Of course not. A flush draw would have given my opponent nine outs (cards that could beat me), which according to the simplest method of calculating odds would give me a 36% chance of losing. Those are good odds for a cash game, but not for a tournament where survival is the most important thing. The same applies for a ten with a low card, which also would give me a 30+% chance of losing. Pocket kings would have required runner-runner queens (less than 1% odds), and pocket queens would mean that I’d need a king (about 10% odds) to win. Pocket jacks would mean that I’d need either a king or a queen (20% chance) and the same applied to A-10 or 10-9. Pocket aces would also be a dangerous hand to find myself up against, although I would have been about a 3:1 favorite there.
There were plenty of possibilities that would have been very good for me, but my opponent did make a big bet after I had raised pre-flop. And I hadn’t been betting much for the half hour that the tournament had been running for. The player did have a bigger stack than me, so there was a good chance that the big stack meant decent instincts. I probably wasn’t up against a bluff, and pocket aces probably would have meant a pre-flop re-raise. My best hopes were flush draws and straight draws, and 2:1 in my favor for all my chips are not odds that I should be happy about when the blinds are still small.
The cards – which I never would have seen had I thought it out to the extent that I have here – were 10-9. I needed a king or a queen, and got neither. It was my 35th BBP Skill League tournament at PokerPages, and arguably the worst finish that I’ve had there. This will certainly not help my quest toward finishing in the top 50 in the PokerPages Skill League. Which is fitting due to the lack of skill that I demonstrated.
Hopefully I’ll learn from this mistake, and anyone reading this can reap the benefit of my experience without suffering the defeat that I did. As long as it’s not against me.
