I was playing a 4.5k guarantee tournament last night on Bodog and I was doing well enough to start serious thinking about making the money. It was fairly late in the tournament and I had just become chip leader with 19k in chips a few rounds earlier and only 80 or so people remained out of the 400 entrants.

I think large stacks go to my head, cause I started feeling invincible. I picked up A Q in early position.

The whole tournament I had been making raises of 3 to 4 times the BB and been fairly aggressive. The idea was that I always wanted to be near the top of the chip leader board or go play Guitar Hero. In other words, I wanted to win or nothing. So, aggression was the order of the day and this is actually a good hand… also, I wanted all my raises to be basically the same since I was being selectively aggressive. I make my standard raise and I get two callers.

The flop comes A Q T

A very nice flop for me, but also dangerous. I’m in early position, but I know that the guy to my immediate left still in the pot often bets on flops like this, especially if he’s first in. So, I check with the idea of check-raising him after his bet… I feel that it’s a stronger move than just a bet and I really would rather win this hand right now.

Just as I hoped, he bets and the other player folds. It comes back to me and I raise him 3x the pot size. Like I said, I want him GONE. That’s when he re-raises all-in.

Now… I’ve got a good hand, right? But not the nuts. And his re-re-raise screams trips. But for some reason, I rarely ever see trips or a set on my danger radar. Also… I had nearly twice the chips that he had. If I had a smaller stack, I probably would have given it more thought. All night, when I was just on an average stack, I was reluctant to shove all my chips in on ANY pot. I know I needed to double up in those situations or at least increase my chips, but usually if someone really put me to the test, I would digress and wait for a better opportunity unless I had a really strong hand… like near nuts.

But for some unknown reason, when I called, I never thought he had just flipped a set on me… I guess because of the factors that I mention above and the annoying bit of information I know about what the odds are of actually flipping a set on the flop.

Anyway… I called… he flipped over pocket Ts and brought me down to a slightly above average chip stack. After that I went pretty card dead and blinded away my chips to a below average chip stack… then when I picked up a hand, the same guy, flipped a set on my AGAIN to take the rest of my chips and I finished in 56th place (paid 36).

Lesson here: When someone plays back at you after your check raise, before you call, honestly evaluate the strength of your hand vs. what they could be holding.

C’est la vie.

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