O-Poker

I got the pass from wife to play some of the Sunday tourneys and decided to play three of them. I played the Pokerstars $1 Million Guarantee, the UltimateBet $200k Guarantee, and the Full Tilt Poker $200k Guarantee. I managed to bust out of every one of them without finishing in the money. I don't think I was playing my best - maybe the lack of sleep Saturday night, the drinks at lunch celebrating my birthday, and my back pain all played a part. In general, I feel I was overplaying my hands and wasn't patient. I need to work on that. My final hands in the tourneys are as follows:

Pokerstars $1 Million - Overplayed AK on a K310 flop with 2 spades. I felt like one of the players was chasing a flush and got all the money in on the turn. One player was chasing the flush and he did hit it on the river. The only problem for both him and me was that the third player in the hand had pocket 3s and the 3 on the river gave him quads.

UltimateBet $200k - In the second hour I flopped an open ended straight flush draw and got all the money in. I had a ton of outs but didn't get any of them.

FTP $200k - I overplayed a hand against a medium stack and became a short stack. I went all in with AK. I was called by KQo. The KQ made a flush and I was out.

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How would you play it results

On Friday, I posted a "How would you play it hand" and got a few responses.

Here is the hand description:

Last night, I decided to play the UB $100 buy-in $15K Guarantee tourney. There were around 160 players paying 20 spots. I had a decent stack for most of the tourney. As we got down to around 28-29 players remaining, the following hand came up:

Blinds 400/800 w/ 50 antes
9 handed table
SB - approx. 3,800
me in BB - approx. 8,800
Pot after antes, SB, and BB - 1,650
Cards dealt to me in BB - K7o
Folds around to SB, SB pushes all-in

Do you call or fold here? Pot size now approx. 5,000; you have to call 3,000 more

I think that I left out of couple of details. First major detail is that the blinds were about to increase. Second detail - I remember had to call approximately 3k into a pot that was over 5k, so I may have the stack sizes a little off. Third detail - the table was playing pretty aggressive and both the players to my left were in the top 5 in chips and making some loose calls.

Results
I figured that the SB was pushing with anything if it was folded to him, since he was so short.

The average hand is Q7, so my hand was a little better than any random hand. (I was sure the SB was pushing with any hand.)

If I lost the hand, I would have a little over 5k in chips. If I folded, I would have around 8k in chips. If I won the hand, I would have around 13k in chips.

I decided that it was worth the risk to try to get the chips and called. I figured that I wasn't in much worse shape with 5k in chips than I would have been with 8k in chips, but 13k in chips would give me a lot better comfort level. The small blind turned over 95s and my K7 held up. I won the pot with King high. The SB stuck around and berated me from the rail for the call. I felt like it was a correct call in the situation - I had a lot more to gain than to lose.

cmitch