Redheads and bad beats

Last night I decided to give the poker tournament thing another shot. Rather than going back to the Port Adelaide clubrooms, we decided to do it down at The Palais at Semaphore.

Before poker came dinner, and I have to say, The Palais put the Alberton Oval to shame. Both Ando and I had the chicken schnitzel, I had it with the dianne gravy, which was delicious, and especially garlic-y. The surroundings were a bit nicer too - it's certainly better looking out over the sea than framed photos of Port stars of yesteryear.

Ando warned me on our way there that the atmosphere wasn't as good at The Palais, and there were quite a few bogans. So I wasn't expecting the best. I was pleasantly surprised though - our table was made up of some pretty friendly people, none of whom seemed to have bogan qualities. The table's main "character" was Ross, an affable redhead who spent most of the night making jokes and trying to get people to loosen up. Possibly a smart tactic seeing as he eventually became the table's chip leader. We had another redheaded guy on the table too, and I learned that only 2% of the world's population are redheads. Apparently this number jumps to 14% in Scotland, presumably it's much lower in places like Sierra Leone and Vietnam. I started wondering if redheads are friendly people in general, and whether I should look to include some in my circle of close friends. I only really know one, and he's a reasonably pleasant fellow, so there may be something to this.

Anyway, for once I had good cards pretty much from the start. I won my first big hand hitting a flush on the river. With two other players still in the hand, I decided I'd slow play things and checked on the final round of betting, hoping I could sucker someone into a bet. Didn't happen, but I took down a pretty nice pot anyway. I won a few more big hands, including a three-way all in with Big Slick, and by about 9pm had turned 1,500 in chips into 5,300.

Ando was doing well too, and had roughly the same amount of chips as myself, when he went all in with A-J. Ross decided to see him with J-3. Even though Ando was the definite favourite, he told Ross before the flop came down "You're gonna win this one". Sure enough, the first card to come down was a three and none of the following four cards did anything to help Andy.

Shortly after we went to a break, and Ando was still seething over the bad beat. He was looking forward to seeing me potentially go all the way though. I wasn't feeling quite as confident. After the break the blinds were up to 500-1,000, and so with 3,500 in chips left I made my move. After getting A-7 suited, I pushed all in. The next few players folded, and then someone with 4,500 called. Ross (sitting in front of a large stack of chips, thanks not only to his win over Ando but a few other lucky wins too), called, and raised another 1,000, putting the other guy all in. So we all turned over our cards, and I had everyone beat pre-flop. Ross had Q-something, the other guy amazingly went all in on 9-6 suited. After what had happened to Ando, I kind of knew how it was all going to go down though. The flop hits the table and of course there's a Queen out there. The next couple of cards do nothing, and Ross adds another 8,000 in chips to his stack.

We left almost immediately, and I think Andy was more annoyed than I was. To both get knocked out on bad beats to the same guy is a bit annoying, but I was left thinking about the way he did it. He seemed like he was getting lucky on the flop, and playing way too many hands, but I've seen quite a few guys do that in these tournaments and consistently do well. Perhaps I'm too cautious with the hands I play, or maybe thesy are just making really good reads. These guys are obviously doing something right though because they seem to consistently do well (I had a look at the leaderboard as we arrived last night and recognised one of these players who was ranked near the top. His name is Matthew Justice. Cool name).

I was pretty happy with how I finished up though. I finished 12th out of 30 something, and even managed to win one pretty good pot on a bluff. I'm looking forward to our next home game, it's seeminly been ages since we last played.