Sometimes you do get a good flop

That hand helped me recover and in the end I finished fourth for 2 1/2 million chips after a disastrous start in which I was close to elimination with another K T suited hand that produced a flop of A T T.

Reminds me a bit of this hand:

How often do you place ITM in a MTT?

I just missed out four or five times before this one, but a lot depends on how hard I am concentrating, and whether I am experimenting with moves, or just decide to double up or quit.

I play in lower entry tournaments when I am less serious or have less time available to play, but focus more on the higher entry ones, so I do better in the higher entry ones.

I would say in the 1-million or more buy in tournaments, where I am really trying and don’t get distracted by other stuff going on at home, that I have been getting into the money in about 2 or 3 out of 5 tournaments, usually get to somewhere around the bubble, and very rarely go out in the first hour.

At this time I have 49.2 million chips, which is below my all time best of 51.4 million, so I have lost more than I have won over the last week.

I seem to do best when I play to sneak into the money, then try to get higher in the money, rather than by trying to win a huge stack early on by getting into all-in stack fights.

After all, you might be almost 50/50 to beat a single opponent pocket pair with AK, but the odds of doing it two times in a row are much less, and the odds of doing it three times in a row are less than 10%. I often see players who have three times the starting stack early on, but they go out long before the bubble. Players who call raises with any two cards often win large pots in the early running, but lack a long-term survival strategy and will also call large bets when they are behind and do not have the right odds to call.

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Seen that Farha/Hudson had so many times… crazy beat, ever more so being the first hand. On your flop str8 flush raise the turn. On the second one, well played. Cheers.

Maybe, I didn’t raise the turn, because I thought the best way to win some money on the hand was to try to keep both opponents in until the river and for at least one of them to improve their hands enough to pay off a value bet. It was a raised three-way pot, and it was definitely mine, but there was a considerable danger, as always with straight flushes, that no one would want to bet. I took the small defensive bet on by the opponent on the turn to mean that he had some kind of draw and wanted to see another card, and the call by the other opponent to indicate that he had something, either a small pocket pair, or an ace, and did not mind paying a small amount to see another card. I did not want to raise on the turn for fear of scaring off opponents, or giving the game away too early. If one of them hit a set, then I could get paid off big time. It was also possible that one of them would try to steal on the river if no interest was shown in the pot. Maybe I could have got a bit more out of it, but who knows?

Yes, an interesting hand. Hudson was a young actor, the son of Goldie Hawn, and was on a featured table with Sammy Farha and Daniel Negreanu (who was a late arrival and not present.) Hudson played the part of a poker player showing up wearing dark glasses, a beard, and a peaked cap indoors.

There must have been a lot of excitement in the build-up as the cameras were on this table and this was a chance for the young actor to be seen by a wider audience.

With a pair of tens, this was a great flop and a chance for the young man to win a large pot against a top pro in front of the cameras on the very first hand.

He led out on the flop and Farha put in a large re-raise which probably looked like a bluff by the old pro trying to humiliate the young man in front of the cameras, but even if he had any ace other than A T-which was very unlikely since 3 of the Tens were already accounted for, he was behind and surely could not call the shove with AK, AQ, or anything other than AA or AT, so Hudson was going to start by winning a nice pot when Farha was forced to fold. But he calls.

Hands are turned over, and… oh ■■■■!

Still, in a way Oliver Hudson was the winner, because people are still watching his hand and talking about it almost 15 years later. This was apparently the only hand he ever played in the WSOP.

Okay. I would encourage you to think about how you would play your entire range here. You’re not going to have a straight flush here very often and a lot of the hands you’ll show up with here are not going to want to let your opponents draw out cheaply. Even if they fold that’s fine, a lot of times you’re going to want to fold or pay a bad price to see the river with their draws. Ah is going to call a reasonable raise and when a heart doesn’t hit the river you’ll lose a lot of value when he gives up with a check fold. Stop trying to trap bad players who are going to pay off way too often. Make a hand and take their money. When you have good hands you should be trying to get all the money in. If you’re never bluffing then fine maybe raising is bad for you, but then if you’re never bluffing how can you ever get paid on the river?

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