Better Lucky Than Good

This week I was in Las Vegas. I mostly played cash games due to time constraints. However, I did play in one tournament. As I walked into the Stratosphere on Wednesday, they made an announcement that the one o'clock daily was about to start.

My wife, who reads my mind after 16 years of marriage, asked me "how long will it take?" After checking at the poker room/area and seeing 17 entries, I told her about 3 hours (yes, I am an optimist). She accepted the burden of having to go shopping while I played cards.

I chose the grinder approach and, with a few exceptions, stuck to premium play. After 2 hours, the two tables were consolidated to one. I was chip leader with 17K in chips. Average stack was 8K. Blinds were 400/800 with no antes until the next level. Players were starting to get antsy with most of them holding fewer than 10 big blinds and everyone else not far behind. With the free-for-all about to begin, I needed to figure out how I was going to last to one of only two spots getting paid.

A few hands later, 8 players were left. The player two to my right was first-in, raising to 2800. Then it was fold-fold to me on the button. I looked down at Ace-Jack off suit and declared "Raise. The bet is his stack," as I pointed to the raiser. The blinds folded and the raiser shrugged his shoulders as he meekly called his remaining 3K into a pot of 9800.

He turned over his Ace-3 of hearts. I was already counting the chips as I flipped over the dominating hand... OH NO!!!!! What I thought was an Ace was actually a 4!!!!

The dealer heard me comment on my mistake and laughed that he has mistaken fours for Aces, too. Small consolation. Where do I pick up my donkey ears, sir?

So, I'm heads up with Jack-4 off suit against Ace-3 hearts. The flop came out Ac-2c-10c. I was so distracted by my mistake that it wasn't until the table groaned at the turn card, 6c, that I saw my 4 was a club! With great remorse (NOT!!!) I collected the pot.

I was now triple the average stack with only six players and me left. Eventually I made it to heads-up play where we chopped the prize. But without my unfortunate mistake (for player #8) and amazing suckout, the result could have easily been different.