1.

first hand of a home tournament yesterday. i'm MP and look down at 8c5c. i have a tight reputation that gets people to fold sometimes even if i limp. so, i limp. it folds around to the SB, who min-raises. he's not a very good player and i know if i hit this flop i'll get a lot of his money, so i call.

flop: 8 5 3, two hearts. he overbets the pot and i move in instantly. after hemming and hawing for about 3 minutes (i'd taken a huge pot off this player under similar circumstances only about three weeks before when my set beat his two pair on the 2nd hand of the tournament), he calls, showing A-8 off.

this guy can't fold a hand!

all i have to do is dodge an ace, and i've doubled up on the first hand.

turn: A

ok. that was unlucky, but i guess i could hit a miracle 5, right?

river: A

ouch. rebuy!

2.

one or two levels later. having played very aggressively with marginal holdings, i'd been pushing the table around and have run my stack up to about 1.5x the starting (in my case, rebuy) amount. in light of this, in EP i see that i hold AQo and just limp. this time there are three players to the flop.

flop: A 8 3 rainbow. i know i have the best hand so when it checks around to me i bet about 2/3 the pot, not wanting anyone to get the right price to hit some weird two pair combo, but more importantly making it look like a steal attempt. it folds around to the same player as before, and i'm licking my chops since i know i have him beat. of course, he calls. remember, this guy can't fold a hand!

turn: Q.

he is first to act and he bets the pot, maybe 300. i think, then raise to 800 and he calls. i'm wondering how much he'll pay me off for on the river. there's no way he has a set of queens; it would be blatantly obvious. keep in mind, this guy can't fold a hand!

river: 8

he stares at the river, looks at his chips, then checks. i am now acutely aware that he has just hit his two-outer with Q8 and i check behind. i announce as much to the table, then turn over my hand. he shows Q8 and wins a pretty sizeable pot for that point in the tournament.

this guy can't fold a hand!

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eventually, i went out on another bad beat to this same player, then another guy (one of the better players in the game) also went out when his 3s full of tens got outdrawn by the same guy's A10. another ace on the river? this guy can't fold a hand!

not surprisingly, even though the guy at that point had amassed something like 1/2 the chips in play with about 3/4 the field remaining, he finished nowhere near the money. unbelievable.

1.
a - fold preflop, especially fold to any raise preflop
b - this is not a bad beat, you were behind preflop and shouldn't have been in the hand to begin with. yeah, the guy didn't need both aces to come, but he's gonna hit at least one, be it on the turn or river, about 12% of the time, right?



2. This is why you don't limp in with strong hands, especially when you said you've been playing aggressively, you dont want hands like Q 8 getting to see a cheap flop and then drawing out on you. If you had raised preflop, you might have avoided this whole situation. And, betting 2/3 of the pot after the flop doesn't look like a steal, it looks like TPTK, or TPGK in your case. If you're gonna play aggressive with marginal hands, play aggressive with strong hands as well. This will make it harder for your opponents to know if you've actually got a hand or not.

Other than that, nice read and slowdown on the river in the second example.