Disappointment

I've never been one to take losses hard. In this game, it's just a part of the territory that you are going to lose sometimes. It's inevitable, and it has been said many times that it is how a player takes his beats and how he handles the down times that decides the true worthiness of his character and decides his ability as a poker player.

However, losing in the first round of a tournament populated by my peers is hard to take. I spend a lot of time discussing the game with these people, and as a poker player, my ego prevents me from really thinking that I'm at the same level as them. We all have egos, and while we are happy for one another when one of us does well in a tournament, when we find ourselves at the same table, we want to bust each other more than is humanly decent.

In a tournament such as this, our structure made it so that skill would ultimately shine through and luck would play a minimum. Heads-up play involves a great deal of luck, but when the matches are decided in a best of 3 or best of 5 format, it's hard to have a total upset.

Losing in the first round hurt, plain and simple. I haven't felt like this after a loss in a long time, and it isn't a pleasant feeling. While I am happy for 84jr and I hope he does well the rest of the way, I can't help but feel responsible for my loss. Jesse at the top of his game would not have made the mistakes I made in the second match, and I feel I would have taken down the series easily. I feel that 84jr's biggest flaw was that his "strong hand=push-and-hope-for-call-to-win-big-pot" strategy would horribly minimize the amount he won on his big hands. He has to get lucky and end up in a spot where not only HE has a huge hand (not often heads-up), but I have a second best hand (extremely rare in heads-up), and I also have to be willing to call.

Me on my best, or even me on a decently good day, would never fall for that trap. And his strategy would fail almost every time. This just wasn't a good day for me, and I gave him a few presents with the JJ pre-flop and J9 top pair hand.

I'm disappointed in my play, and I'm looking forward to the next heads-up tournament, when I'll be sure to be on my best behavior.

Monkey see, monkey do,
Jesse