New England Poker Classic $500 NLHE

[Toro]

Last fall at the WPT event at Foxwoods I got involved in a hand with guy heads up where I had AA and he had KK. We got a fair amount of money in pre-flop and then got the rest in when the flop came A,K,6.

I had him covered and the poor guy was out and devastated. Huck Seed, Antonio Esfandiari and Mark Seif were at the table and TJ Cloutier close by on the rail. The guy was insistent that there had to be something he could have done differently to prevent getting knocked out of the tourney.

They all told him he was nuts, that there was nothing he could do in that situation that you're just destined to lose. But then Huck Seed said that there was one thing he did wrong. He failed to build his stack sufficiently so that he could sustain a bad beat. And Huck wasn't joking, he was making a serious point. Everyone just nodded and said yeah absolutely right.

[ohkanada]

I wrote a post a few years ago about how I had 4 ugly beats in consecutive tournies. My conclusion was as Huck said, if I had more chips then maybe the opponents would have played the final hands differently or I would have chips left after the bad beat.

Don't lay blame on the cards.

Ken Poklitar