Exactly what I was talking about

My exit from the WWdN last night was a perfect example of what happens when I try to slowplay. I get KK in the big blind and it folds to Katitude in the small blind. She completes and I check, hoping to cash in big with my cowboys. The flop is rags, but there are two diamonds in the rough. Kat bets 90, large for the size of the pot, but still just 3BB. It's still early in the tournament, the diamonds concern me a bit, and I'd be happy to take the extra 90 and come away clean, so I make a pot-sized raise, assuming Kat will fold. She calls. I suppose I should have clicked the bet bar a couple more times to clearly deny odds on the flush draw. As it was, Kat was getting 2-to-1 on a perceived 37% chance (actually 33% since I had one diamond) of hitting her flush. Close, but a technically correct call, even discounting implied odds.

The turn brings the third diamond. Kat bets 90 again. Given that the pot was up to 510, this should have set off the alarm bells, but no such luck. I'm not sure what I thought about the small bet, but it didn't scream, "I've got the flush." Maybe if I'd played more with Kat I would have recognized this trickery for what it was. Without that experience, my brain didn't know what to think of it, and apparently disregarded it. I again put in a roughly pot-sized raise to cut off odds on the flush draw. Kat makes the call.

The river is a 7, filling three different possible inside straights, though I strongly doubt that to be a consideration in this hand. Kat puts in the rest of her chips, 520. At this point it should have been blatantly obvious that I was beat. Conspicuously small bet on the turn, a call of my pot-sized raise, and now the rest of her chips. Kat's plenty smart enough to know a bet like that into a pot like this isn't going to scare me away, so it has to be a value bet. One of these days maybe I'll get disciplined enough to lay down hands like this. Kat turns over the Q6 of diamonds and walks away with almost all my chips.



I'm going back to pounding the pot when I've got strong but vulnerable hands. A nice raise from me pre-flop, Kat folds the incredibly weak Q6s, and I live on to donk off my chips to someone else.

I last a few more hands and, to add insult to injury, go out when my flopped top pair jacks with an ace kicker run into KK.

Tonight it's The Mookie at Full Tilt.