AK...phooey
 

Not really a BAD Bad Beat story, but a beat none-the-less...

So there I am today, playing in the 315pm UB $5 DE to the SCNII in January. I've done fairly well all game. I didn't end up having to rebuy at all and passed on the final addon. I managed to make it final table (in the interests of full disclosure, there were only 3 tables that, through alternates, saw 43 different people make a run at it). At that point, I'm as happy as a pig...well, you get the idea - I'm happy that I made is this far as people are dumping $5 after $5 into rebuys (one guy I counted 9 rebuys).

I continue to play my heart out and actually make it to heads up. I'm SERIOUSLY shortstacked at ~42K to opponents ~120K. I catch AKo and go all-in. He calls and shows J9s. The flop comes AJK. SWEET! Two pair. If I remember correctly, it was Ad so it did open up a possible flush for him, but I'm already all-in so not much to do but hold my breath and watch.

Then came the turn....J

Then came the river....nada. My world came crashing down upon me (well, okay, not really - like I said, I was stoked to have made it to final table). I walked away with $30 so I still felt accomplished, but man...if I could have doubled up off of him on that hand, I might have a completely different bad beat hand to tell you about :)

My 2 cents: If you're not willing to take AT LEAST the initial rebuy AND the add-on (always), you shouldn't play in a rebuy tourney. Save your money for a normal tourney where you're not putting yourself at such a large disadvangtage.

It was definitely something I was *willing* to do, but then at tourney start, there were only, I believe 5 or 6 of the 30 players, who bought in for the immediate rebuy. I decided then not to bother rebuying there. I think it may have actually helped me as I was playing at a disadvantage as 3 of those 5/6 were at my table. I may have subconsciously been more carefree if I had chips to match them. Then, after that, I don't think my chips dropped back below 1500 so I was never eligible for another rebuy.

The add-on...well, that's another story. At that point, I was sitting middle-of-pack I think with about 4500 in chips. Chip leader was up around 14K and with the add-on went up on me almost 4:1 in chips. I probably should have added-on there. There were only 2 of us that didn't add-on. Would those 1500 have made a difference at endgame? Hard to say, but adding-on wouldn't have been the dumbest thing I ever did.

Speaking of dumb, I know I chased down one pot that, in hindsight, I should have ran away from. Which cost me a good portion of my chips. I recovered, and gained them back plus some, but I think things would have ultimately been different had I tossed that hand.

My tourney game hasn't been very good. I've only played in a few tourneys and generally had a rather poor showing. While this was my best tourney ever, I do know I made mistakes and am definitely looking to learn from them.