So, we found our way to the next home game tonight…bbq followed by a nice poker session. We played our regular NL HE tournament and with 12 players showing up, we split up to two tables of 6 players. Shorthanded play, not bad. I played three hands in the whole tourney…I was ahead in all three hands and suffered one junk kicking after the next. Not a single win and I’m ahead at all times until the turn/river….bad luck describes it best, I guess…

Hand 1:

A8 MP, raise preflop…one caller…flop 8-10-Q rainbow…I lead out and bet half the pot…call..turn is blank…I lead out and bet half the pot…call…river 9…I lead out and bet half the pot…call…opponent shows: 67o…straight….nice…NOT

Hand 2:

910s…I bet preflop…one caller…flop comes down A910…I lead out again…call…turn A…now I’m worried…but I can’t lay this down, I need to bet to find out if he’s got the Ace…call…river is blank…now I check and he bets about 1/8th of the pot…easy call…sure enough he shows A3o…nice…NOT

Now I’m shortstacked (around 1/3 of my starting stack) and I’m steaming…next hand I’m in the BB…

Hand 3:

I look down at my cards and find KK…nice 🙂 …I wait to see what happens and the Button calls, the SB calls…it’s on me and I raise All-In…Button ponders and ponders and calls…SB folds…he shows: A8o….now if an Ace comes down I won’t be disappointed, after all this is poker…it can happen…but that’s not the way it or me is going down:

Flop: 6-7-10…turn 10…river: 9…two pair kings and tens loses to straight…and I’m out of the tourney….

Wow, how unlucky can you be? Damn! Ah well…at least I finished 2nd in the side game which was played parallel to the final table of the main tourney, so I’m only slightly down for the night (and still way ahead overall), but it still hurts to go out early without doing anything wrong (?!)…ahead till the turn/river and then no joy – side note: I lost the final hand of the sidegame QJ vs 10-8, flop and turn are blank…river 8 and IGHN…I guess it just wasn’t my night… 😉

On the bright side there’s always another time to play and so I won’t lose any sleep about my early exit tonight…