Royal Flush Poker

This hand at PacificPoker.co.uk involved myself picking up (Ad,8d) in fairly late position. The players in the blinds were fairly shortstacked, and I decided to make a loose raise to try and pick up the pot.

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Both blinds called however, and the flop came down (10c,Qs,4h) Both players checked, and so I decided to make a small bet in the hope that they would perceive this to mean I wanted a call. My feeling was that they had both missed, but the big blind player decided to call. Then, an (As) came off on the turn. Now I was certain I was in front and began to feel my opponent had a hand containing a Queen. We had already built a reasonable sized pot and what I should have done was bet out strongly to try and take the pot down there and then. What I did was bet small to try and lure my opponent into putting more chips into the pot.

There is a lesson here to be learnt, and I should have known better than to raise small and risk losing a nice pot. Another (4) came off on the river and I bet quite strongly. My poker opponent quickly called showing (J,4) for a set. You might say that it was rather loose play for him to call preflop and throughout the hand, but I had to recognise that I was making it cheap enough for him to do so. I should have closed the hand down and been happy with what was already in the pot, but I got greedy and took the risk to try and get an extra 2,000 into the pot.

This was the second big hand which went astray for me on the final table, but I managed to steady the ship at 15,000 chips soon after. I can say though that I was entirely at fault in this hand, and so I cannot have any real complaints.