Learn Texas Holdem

I was playing in a $16+1.60 scheduled tournament on BoDog. It had already been a rough day at the tables - I'd been on the wrong end of AA vs. KK in one tournament, had A-K busted by A-J in another - but nothing I hadn't seen before. Anyway, we were down to 13 players from the starting 27, and I had 2,290 chips (starting stacks were 1,500) with the blinds at 50-100 - a little below the average, but enough to play with.

I pick up pocket jacks on the button. Now, alomst everyone who plays Hold 'Em knows that jacks are one of the most frustrating hands to play - but you still have to play them. So someone raised to 260 from early position. I often reraise with jacks to protect them against A-x, and I did it again here, pumping it up to 650. The player in the small blind, who had about 6,900 chips - and had already made several questionable moves only to have them pay off - called my reraise, and the original raiser folded. So counting the blinds, we had 1,660 chips in the pot going to the flop, and I have 1,640 left in my stack.

The flop comes off 9 of diamonds, five of clubs, two of spades - a pretty safe flop for jacks. The small blind checks; I think a few seconds and go all-in. Now, this may seem like a questionable move on my part, but here's my reasoning: I had already committed over a quarter of my chips to the pot, and I was pretty sure I had the best hand (I felt he would have come over the top with queens or better, and the odds of him hitting a set were unlikely). Furthermore, sometimes you need to make aggressive moves in tournaments to get chips, and I decided this was one of those times. I figured an all-in (which roughly the size of the pot) would either 1) pick up the pot right there, or 2) confuse my opponent and goad him into calling with an inferior hand (especially since he had made some other bad moves already). After a few seconds, he does call - and shows K-Q of diamonds. Since this is a bad beat story, it doesn't a genius to figure out what happened next. The turn was the 10 of diamonds - and the river was the Ace of diamonds. Just like that I'm out of the tournament.

This wouldn't have angered me so much if the player had bluffed all-in and then drawn out on me. But the fact that he called off so many chips with no hand or draw and still won the pot bothers me on a whole different level. I looked up this player's stats afterwards, and he's only cashed in 12.5% of the tournaments he's played on BoDog (I'm at 24%), so I know that he gets his in the long run - but it's just frustrating that someone can play so bad and get so lucky. (I think I'm starting to sound like Devilfish). Thanks for letting me get this off my chest.

-Michael