Aussie Millions 2010 - Part 3

The turn was a blank and given my stack size in relation to the pot, if I was going to carry on with a bluff then it had to be all-in. Otherwise I could give up and play on with 60% of my starting stack.

He had thought for quite a while before he called me on the flop, and I thought he had a hand like / and was calling once to see what I would do on the turn. I was pretty confident I could make him pass a hand like this, so I paused for a bit then moved my whole stack in. On reflection I think I was half right - I think he would have passed . In fact, he actually thought long and hard before eventually calling with .

My exit hand in the main event was pretty similar. I'd already lost half my stack with KK on a Q85-7-8 board, when my opponent had called pre-flop with . I don't think I could have gotten away from that any more cheaply, but the second big pot that I lost was another complete bluff.

Again I'd been playing pretty tight and opened for a normal sized raise with AK. I got one caller behind me and continuation bet a T53 flop, which he called again. The turn was a 6 and I decided to fire again. At this point I was thinking if he had slow-played / pre-flop or slow-played a set on the flop, then he would raise me now. If he didn't have a hand like that, then I believed that I could make him pass on the river with an all-in bet.

I should have aborted the plan when the 4 hit the river. Obviously it is now a pretty scary board with the obvious straight possibility if he only has a (which I now think is the case), but at the same time my all-in move now looks like a bluff, since he's going to expect me to check an over-pair now. I think my bluff here was actually pretty terrible now that I think of it, and he figured things out and made a good call with KT.

I suppose it was a little unfortunate that in both my exit hands, I had the dominating hand pre-flop and my opponents had to spike a 3 outer on the flop to continue in the hand. Also, I could have won decent pots if the flop had come K high instead either time. The hand was a little unlucky too - I raised pre-flop and made a decent bet on the flop, so it was hard to put him on 78. However despite these excuses, most of the money went in when I was losing, so it's not like I couldn't have done anything about it.

I've still got a week left before I go home, but I don't really feel like playing any more poker, and there aren't really any great tournaments left. It's been an OK trip financially - I won enough in the cash games to cover the cost of the trip, and obviously it was nice to get a bit of sunshine when the weather's so dismal back home.

I'm going to play golf tomorrow, then go out drinking on Tuesday for the Australia Day celebrations. After that I'm going to have a few days at a scuba diving resort on one of the islands off the coast that we visited last year.

Hopefully the temperature will be back in positive numbers by the time I get home!