Lucky Streak Poker

This is a hand which has played it’s part in my last two PokerStars.com tournaments, with a mixture of fortune. In my weekend live game, I picked up (Ad,Kd) very early on and could only extract a few hundred chips due to the size of the blinds, despite flopping an Ace and a Flush draw, completing my Flush on the turn.

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Later on I doubled up the shortstack whilst holding (Ah,Kh) against his (Ac,Qs) and then picked up the blinds later on when I found (Ad,Kd) again. I finished an online tournament a moment ago in which an interesting hand took place with me holding (Ac,Kc) in the big blind. I had been thinking about this hand recently and how I almost always play it very fast preflop to prevent having to play it on the flop if I miss. I had decided though to try playing it differently next time, taking a flop. As the player under the gun raised to three times the big blind preflop, it was folded around to me, and I decided against a reraise.

The flop fell (3,6,J) with no clubs and I decided to try something creative. Having checked to my opponent, I felt certain he would raise, and he did, betting 300. I then reraised it to 750 and after some thought, my opponent called. I could now eliminate overpairs to a Jack and (A,J) from his potential starting hands as I would have almost certainly been reraised had this been the case.

I checked the Turn of a (Q) as did my poker opponent, and I felt he was weak enough that an (A),(K), or (10) would win me the pot. Unfortunately, I missed the river and we both checked. He showed (10,10) but it’s important to see how my reraise on the flop changed the way the hand played out. It gave me a great deal of information about my opponents hand, and gave me a chance to hit one of several outs on the Turn or River. My opponent had me outchipped 2 to 1 at the start of the hand and if I had pushed preflop, I probably would have lost it all. As it turned out I lost around 1,300 from my 6,500 stack.