A Horse is a HORSE...

Last night saw the first ever WPBT HORSE tournament on Full Tilt. For those not familiar, HORSE is a rotation game of five different fixed limit card games: Holdem, Omaha Hi/Lo, Razz, Stud, and Stud Eight. I played well for most of the night, clawing my way down to the final two tables before going out 11th out of 93. Two bad plays sunk me: the first in Stud Eight, and the second (which was even worse) in holdem.

We can dispense with the holdem hand first. With about 10k in my stack, I caught kings in the BB. We were 5-handed at that point. The button open-raised, and I figured it was a steal raise but rather than re-raise, I called, hoping no ace would flop. Which, of course, it did.

I bet into the button for 1000, and he raised me to 2000. On an A-T-3 board, with a short stack, the smart thing would have been to throw away my kings. The evidence was there that I was beat, but I stubbornly reraised to 3000. He called. When a blank hit the turn, I led out again for 2000, and he raised again to 4000. At this point, I only had 4200 behind, so with 16,000 in the pot, I surrendered, I guess. I pushed the rest of it in. He called and turned over AQ. IGHN.

I think I played the hand well, until I reraised the flop. That was the key mistake. If I had folded there, I would have had 7000 left. Not in great shape, obviously, with blinds of 500/1000, but it would have been something. Who knows what might have happened.

The stud-eight hand I don't quite recall the details. I think a short stack moved in ahead of me with a junk door card, I reraised with 3d4s/As and got called by a big stack on my left. I think I bet fourth street when I paired my three, checked fifth street when the all-in guy made a pair of fives against a queen to me and a junk board to the other player. I made queens and threes on sixth street, which brought a third heart to the third player's board. When he called my sixth street bet, I had a feeling he had made his flush. I checked the river, and then called his 1600 to see his flush. Crap. That moved me down into short stack land. I was doing ok in holdem, despite the high blinds and short-handed game, until the kings hand. Oy.

Oh well, first HORSE tourney ever for me, first time playing tournament ORSE, I think I did ok. 11th out of 93 is not bad. I was gunning for the final table. Maybe if I hadn't self-destructed, I would have made it! More tomorrow.