Who knows?

Poker really annoys me sometimes - well quite a lot. I've still to learn to cope well with either a bad beat (does anyone?) or a bad decision (either by me or someone else). I had a couple of things go against me last night in one tournament and it lead me to play like a tool until I thought "STOP PLAYING YOU IDIOT!".

If you look at the whole of yesterday, then it wasn't too bad. I increased my bankroll and qualified for Party Poker's Super Tuesday" event (buy-in $162 and prize pool of about $160,000) by coming 2nd out of 112 in a $10 qualifier. Also, I was doing well in a $5 re-buy tournament.

It was that rebuy tournament that did most of the damage to my mood. As I said, I was doing ok. There were 290 people left, it was paying top 243 and I was within the top 100 chipstacks. I was dealt pocket Kings and thought that in order to get in the serious money, I needed to use the cards while I had them. I went for it and was called by pocket aces. These things happen I suppose, and maybe I should have been more wary, but crashing out from an OK position really pissed me off.

I then had my AQ cracked by A5 in the big tournament and crashed out of that too. Christmas would have been pretty good in my household if I'd got that top prize of about $38,000!

Because of these "incidents" I took a bit of a break from poker today to do a bit of Christmas shopping (joy!) and have just sat down to play a few hands now. It's again not looking good!

When I sat down at the first table I was dealt pocket 10s. I've come to refer to these, even before this hand, as the "hand of doom" because I never play them right. I called a blind and hit trips on the flop. I see $$$ but am slightly worried because there is a J on the flop as well, but no flush draw. There's a small raise which I call. The turn makes litle difference, but someone raises the pot. I call and the river is a Q. I'm now worried about the straight so when it gets checked to me, I just check it down. The guy shows trip Js and I'm out half my stack on the first hand. To be honest it could have been more and I'm glad I resisted the urge to re-raise the turn bet!

These things happen I guess. Oh and I've just had another cracker. Someone called my pre-flop raise (I had AK suited) with 8-10 off-suit which hit a straight....shouldn't complain I guess. In the long-run......*sigh*