This is a Cruel Game

I was looking forward to playing poker this Friday at my friends birthday party, I really wanted to shake the tastes that the recent beats I have taken left in my mouth. I feel I do a good job of keeping my cool when it comes to bad beats, and I don't dwell on them most of the time, but sometimes you just want to get back to the tables to erase those memories. So we start the tournament with $5000 chips, and 15 minute blind levels. There are 18 players total, so it should be a fairly decent amount of play available.

Well as the tournament gets underway within the first few minutes I start to notice that at my table it's between $200 - $500 to play while the blinds are $25/$50, and I laughed to myself because I only do it when I have Aces, and the hands these amounts were being raised with weren't even close to that. So I decide to take advantage of of a limped "Family" pot, there was about $600 out there in free money and I bluffed on the flop and everyone folded to my bet. But I was shut out of the action for a considerable amount of time after that because of the pre-flop raises and I didn't even have connectors to call with. Gerrie has been all over the place with his chips and he goes all-in for his last $2000 chips, I have about $5300 or so, and I look down to see , so I go all-in to isolate him he flips over , Gerrie catches a on the flop and he survives. Once again good call, but nothing I can really do about it at this point.

So I take a hit there, but I still have enough chips to play with. There was a lot of pre-flop raising going on at my table as I stated before, and with the hit I took against Gerrie that made calling a few bets to see a flop even more difficult. About 1 blind level later I pickup in fairly early position, I was dwindling in chips and the blinds had gotten up to a decent amount so I decide to push all in hoping for a fold as there was about $450 in blinds to be had in the pot. Suprisingly everyone folds, I thought for sure I would get a call from someone, but I didn't and I needed chips too. The tournament started with 18 players and at this point there were about 13 people left, and the final table seemed far from attainable to me. For some reason I just wasn't feeling great about my chances at this point.

The blinds still sit at $150/$300 and I am still hovering around $2000 in chips, I pickup in first position. I think for a minute about how much I can bet to take the blinds down without getting a call from someone. I decide to go all in because of the unpredictability of the play, and the fact that if I do get called there weren't many hands I was going to be a complete dog to. Everyone folds, and it gets to Frankie in the BB, he has about 4k in chips and he decides to call and he flips over , what??? Of course he promptly catches a on the flop and my hand doesn't improve to knock me out of the tournament. I didn't pay much attention to the rest of the tournament, I went off and did Karaoke to get my mind of off it. Here were the final results:

1. Mark
2. Daniel
3. Brian
4. Christina

We played a one table consolation tournament afterwards, and I placed third after putting the pressure on Ben only to find he had a better hand than me. The reason I titled this as a cruel game is because, I make every effort not to rely on luck, but I seem to always lose to players that do. It's just frustrating to make the right decision and be in the lead most of the time when it's for all the chips, and have it backfire on you and lose. That's the game, and it happens to everyone, I just have to weather the storm and get back on track.