I messed up big time!!!!

[imcastleman]

I played in the Million Dollar tourney last night and did better than I expected so I am thrilled; however, I made two huge mistakes that were VERY expensive and could have easily been avoided.

First off, my table image is most likely a bit questionable as I have showed down 2 middle position raises with QJ offsuit and someone who had a few more chips than the raises had re-raised all in and I called, but not once in this tournament did I show down a hand that involved AA, KK, AK…none of the premium hands that I had were shown down. As a side note, the gap(from the Gap Concept) was much larger than in most tournaments as the bubble lasted a long time all the way from just in the money all the way to 1st place really since every move up won you at least $600 more. So, this is what happened. I was in the c/o and had 3 4 offsuit and it was folded to me(ok, ok, the gap isn’t that big but I hadn’t played a hand in about 3 orbits. I am in second chip position at the table with 130,000 and the guy on the button has 220,000 and he has been playing very tight up until this hand, he loosens up a bit and starts to hit everyone hard with his chips. The little blind has 75K and the BB has 90K so if I get re-raised I can easily fold. A little more information that I realized a little too late. Just about everytime I was first in the pot, I would raise at least 3 – 3.5 BB’s, So, in this hand, I decide to raise 2 big blinds to 20,000 which may have been a bit of a tell, the button calls and both blinds fold. So, if I want to win the pot, I either have to catch something or take him off of his hand. Well, for the kind of money we are playing for and the fact that he has me covered by plenty, I bet 10,000 on the flop of KJ3. He raises to 20k and I call hoping to catch a 3 or a 4 on the turn. If not, I just check fold. Of course, with me checking he knows that I am going to fold as weak as I have played this hand. So, he bets 75k. He is just as likely to have a hand as to not and knowing that I don’t since I have never played a hand this tournament the way that I played this one. I have no choice but to fold. That hand brings me down to 90k but the blinds went up to 7.5k and 15k a few hands later. Not terrible but this is the first time this tournament I fell below 10 big blinds. So, I go about 3 more orbits and the chipleader(the guy to my left) had total control over the table and in the big blind of 15K with 32K after posting am dealt Q7 off suit. The chipleader raised to 30k from utg and no one called, so I decide to move all in(knowing full well that he is going to call me) hoping that I get lucky. I really don’t need anyone to tell me how terrible these two plays are, I just wanted to get it off my chest since I know I cost myself anywhere from two thousand to $232,000. Anyway, I finished a very disappointing 18th(only because of the 2 bad plays I made) and won $8,750. Am I the only player who makes absolutely asinine plays? Partially, the fact that we had played for nearly 8 hours along with the fact that I was really paying attention and concentrating on what others were doing and why was really making me tired. In addition, when I went all in on the last hand, I was half way satisfied with $8,000, actually, very satisfied. After a nights sleep and all day today, I have realized that this is a terrible attitude to have when getting into tournaments. Hopefully, this story will remind some of you when you are in a similar situation to not do anything STUPID when there is so much money at stake. Comments are welcome.