St Cloud Series Event #1

This took a while but finally a little time to blog. Last months SCSOP event was a very fun and classic bar poker game. I played well all day and then made one mistake and It cost me my tournament. Chalk it up to another hard poker lesson. I had decided to play very tight aggressive in this event and that is basically how I played but my cards ran so good for the first 2 hrs that it looked as if I was playing hyper aggressive. It is funny how one player can change the whole way a table plays. Most of you know Carlos and I am not going to use code names for this story. Carlos was an hour late for this event and as the tables worked out he ended up at the table next to me. Now I didn't play many hands with him and he didn't get many of my chips, but he did change the outcome of my tournament. Carlos won several big pots when he first got to the table and amassed a big chip stack. I had been close to the chip leader the whole time. When Carlos has chips he opens his already lose game up even more and he extra loose at this point basically playing every hand and in his situation I probably would have played the same. Blinds are 100-200 and I have over 14,000 in chips. I am small blind and pot is raised and then reraised by another very loose aggressive player that usually has nothing when he raises. Person in front of Carlos calls and of course Carlos calls. I look down to 3-4 off suit. It's only 400 more and I sure that there is going to be at least 2 callers behind me and guy that reaised would never reraise. I figure see flop and then fold. Flop is 3-4-6 two diamonds. I am not putting anyone on 2-5 or 5-7 so I check to make a reraise. There is a pretty big bet and Carlos calls, so I move all in to try and get rid of at least one if not everyone. A couple fold and then it gets back to bettor and he insta calls, so I figure he has an over pair. Carlos thinks for like 5 minutes and then folds. Guy turns over 6-9 of diamonds. So he has top pair and a flush draw. Really! Reraise preflop with 6-9 suited and then call off almost all your chips with a draw. I am not sure of the odds here but depending on the diamond situation of other players he may have been close to 50-50. Turn of course is a diamond and my day is over. It was a poor play by me playing the 3-4 to start with but when you add someone like Carlos to a table it forces other to play more aggressive and it increases the pot odds to stay in hands. Had there been a raise and a reraise and no one else when it got to me I fold and am still alive. Now, Carlos did end up 2nd in tournament and I am not knocking how he played. I just need to learn to adjust my game even more for players with that same style of play. I will say that when he got heads up that instead of getting more aggressive he got really tight and it cost him the tournament. He did lose one big hand that he was drawn out on but he should have had a big chip lead at that point and was barely ahead to survive. Any congrats to Rod on his 1st CMPPA title. You played well and won all the big pots at the right time. Next is Omaha Split my favorite game so hopefully I will have something good to blog about next!