Uncle! Uncle!

I should have cried Uncle last night and gave up. I wanted to watch the Presidential Debate but instead found myself at a 5 year olds birthday party. As I'm sure you are aware these are often just more fun than a barrel of monkeys but I was able to peel the family away in time to make the $8,000 guaranteed tournament at Absolute. I arrived back at home with 5 minutes to spare and was busted before the first break.

I called an early raiser with QJo in late position and 3 of us saw the flop. The flop came Q high and I had a sense that the only hands that could beat me were AQ or KQ. I just couldn't put anyone on a big pair, not even the early raiser. The early raiser came out with a bet about one third the pot and the MP called as well as myself. The turn and river were blanks and the EP raiser led out each round. We let him and at showdown the EP had only pocket 10's. The MP player showed KQ and I was left with 10 x the Big Bet within 5 minutes of the tournament starting. I played this hand all wrong, knew I could be beat, and still chucked my chips into the pot. I tried to hang on but with no cards to fight back with it was only a matter of time and that time was short.

Not being too horribly disappointed I moved to Ultimate Bet and fired up two cash tables. I received good starting hands on both tables but always seemed to come up second best. What made things worse was I knew what my opponents had, I knew I was beat, yet kept putting money in the pots hoping my reads were wrong. A cardinal sin broken and I paid 40BB for my sacrilege.

To give you an idea of what I was up against I held AA UTG. I raised and got two callers. The flop came QQx and I just knew someone had the Q. I led out only to get raised by the CO. I folded the hand...NOT! I knew I was beat so I called...NOT! I raised it. Was reraised then called and check/called all the way through the river just throwing my money away. My KK ran into AA and my flopped trips, which filled into a full house on the river was taken down by a bigger full house. Many more second bests and thus was my night.

On the bright side after busting out of the hold em games I decided to give Omaha/8 a try. I went to the .25/.50 tables to get my feet wet and managed to double my buy in. I've always read starting hands are key to omaha so I tried to be disciplined in this manner. It seemed to work and I had fun. I won't be jumping into omaha anytime soon but I'll probably dabble from time to time.