Round 3: The Ace

Today we’ll hear from The Ace, a Software Engineer originally from Argopoli, Salerno, Italy. While he calls his poker style tight, he claims to know when it’s time for a change.

Sometimes it happens that you fold bad cards and realise after the river you had the winning hand, but the final table isn’t the best place to start thinking it’s your lucky day. Round 2 had a good start for me. I had 7-6 when I played my first flop. Flop was 8-9-J, turn was 10. Only two of us were in game when the other guy decided to bet. His bet was too low, thus he probably didn’t have a Q. The river was harmless, and at the showdown, he had no Q as expected. My next winning hand eliminated one player; I won many chips and increased my chances of sitting amongst the last 8. I decided to slow down, but when I sat at the last table, I met completely different kinds of opponents. Their bets were 2-3 times higher than the ones I was used to. Luckily, I didn’t have to pay blinds for few hands, so I took the time to study them for free. I found some of them too solid with so many chips, but I knew something had to be done. I needed to shorten the match; otherwise the blinds would have consumed my stack. I took a risk against the player with the shortest stack. I was hoping my Q-J might end up in a winning hand, so I went all-in. His hand was better than mine and I needed a 9 at river to complete a straight. Some time ago, someone told me that life follows the 80-20 rule, 20% is luck. Chances to get a 9 at river were about 1:11 and I guess I got my 20% of luck (plus some extra) right when I needed it. Blinds were $600-1.2K when I finally had good cards again. I went all-in many times to steal blinds and bets, with each bet around $4K-5K. With these chips I could pay blinds until the next good hand, but in the meantime the other players kicked each other out.