Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin

One thing I try to never do, is lambaste an opponent of mine after he/she sucks out on me horribly thus eliminating/crippling me from a tournament. There are several reasons I subscribe to this philosophy. The primary reason is that I want my opponent to put himself in that position. I want them to do it again the next hand; I want them to do it again the next day; I want them to do it again next year. I do not want to rant at them, belittle them, educate them. You want to play like a smacked ass? Have a day.

Now...does this mean I don't get...irritated? Absolutely not. I especially get...irritated...when I'm in with the best of it against the same person and continue to get run down. Such luck sackery will drive anyone to drink. Yesterday I lamented how this happened 3 times in a span of 8 hands in a SNG. Here are the screen caps of that nightmare (chips are in preflop on all of them):

Then there was the RPT last night. The nemesis this time was Jcanuck7. He had shown an uncanny ability in the Mookie (the night before) to get his money in with the worst of it and be rewarded. Little changed last night (until he ran into a bigger suckout artist). I was cruising along in the top 5 when (and I'll accept some culpability here), having folded for a little while, I decide to raise it up in EP with KT. I had been getting respect on these raises and I didn't want to go too long without flexing a little. Folds to Jcanucky7 who smooth calls in SB (in fairness, he was ahead at this point as you will see). Upon the flop, he shoves. I read it as a steal attempt. I felt my hand was good, albeit vulnerable. With my stack size compared to his, I was comfortable making the call. It wouldn't kill me to be wrong. Here is the screen cap:

So yet another situation of getting the money in when I was a 2-1 fav. Just a few hands later the money goes in preflop against him and I find I'm a 3-1 fav. Seeing that, the following, I guess, was inevitable:



I am now scraping the felt and bow out when my 88 runs into KK. For good measure, I sit down at a six-man SNG, get my money in on the turn with 2 pair vs. a dude who paired his ace on the flop, then proceeded to hit his 2 kicker in the river.

So, in summation, I am certainly overjoyed that people continue to put their money in when I'm way ahead, but I seem to be losing more of these than the math suggests I should (especially against the same villain). The good news is, now that I'm playing more, this should straighten out over the long haul. Small sample size anomalies should not discourage the anticipation of long term success in these situations. So love the sinner who continues to play from behind; hate the sin of them getting rewarded all too often.

As a side note, late in the tourney, Full Tilt went kablooey. It will be interesting to see what happens with that.