busted with queens

[Drimson King]

i was playing in a small tournament-style league on tuesday night, and folding at a regular rate. i cannot remember the exact details of the hand, but i looked down at queens in mid-late postion. i believe the blinds were 200-400 and i raised to 1200 leaving less than 7,000 in my stack. i was called by scott (the overwhelming chip leader who has been impressing me more and more lately) in late position. the flop is king high and all diamonds, but nothing frightening other than the king and diamonds. i checked to scott who re-examined his whole cards and then made a large bet of 3,000. i have had scott's number in the past, and now i am considering many things. does he have the nut diamond draw? why overbet the flop? was the card check an act? weak king? AK? flush? bluff? call? can't call. would only have 3,500 left and am out of position. fold and i am a short stack still. win and i have ammunition to go after him further. an all-in and he will have to call. i go all-in. he shows Q-8 diamonds. well played.
scott, two things stood out above others on that hand, and these are elementary 101 type things, but i did not expect them from you. the re-examining of your cards when you knew damn well they were diamonds, and the overbetting of the flop which seemed like you were trying to take IT down instead of me.
nice hand.

[Chipless Wonder]

I want to add a few comments here...

i was playing in a small tournament-style league on tuesday night, and folding at a regular rate. i cannot remember the exact details of the hand, but i looked down at queens in mid-late postion.

I could be wrong on this, since I'm drinking beer right now, but I believe Travis was in the big blind on this hand. I called from middle position with a hand I normally wouldn't play at all:



In this case, I called because I had a large chip stack, had been winning nearly every pot I played, and this seemed like a decent speculative starting hand.

i believe the blinds were 200-400 and i raised to 1200 leaving less than 7,000 in my stack. i was called by scott (the overwhelming chip leader who has been impressing me more and more lately) in late position.

I had ~ 18,000 chips at the start of the hand, so the 800 raise was only ~ 4.5% of my stack after the initial 400 call.

I know Travis and have a tremendous amount of respect for his game. We've done battle a dozen times or so in the past, and I think he's gotten the better of me every single time.

Anyway, my thought process here was that he's a solid player and for him to raise from out of position, he had to have a strong hand. I was thinking pocket tens to aces, or possible A-K or A-Q.

If the flop comes scary for one of those hands, there's a chance I can get a few of his chips. If I sense that he likes the flop, I can just fold and move on to the next hand.

the flop is king high and all diamonds, but nothing frightening other than the king and diamonds. i checked to scott who re-examined his whole cards and then made a large bet of 3,000. i have had scott's number in the past, and now i am considering many things. does he have the nut diamond draw? why overbet the flop? was the card check an act? weak king? AK? flush? bluff?

I knew I had hit the dream flop and my only task now was to figure out how to get the most chips into the pot. My only fear at this point was that Travis could have the ace of diamonds. So I couldn't let him draw cheaply. I definitely had to bet out. There were 2,600 chips in the pot, so I figured anything close to a pot-sized bet would make it a mistake for him to call me. Then it occurred to me that if the king on the flop scared him because he had jacks or queens, he couldn't really call a 'normal sized' bet. But he just might think 'm bluffing if I overbet the pot. And if he has aces or A-K he'd probably re-raise me all-in.

call? can't call. would only have 3,500 left and am out of position. fold and i am a short stack still. win and i have ammunition to go after him further. an all-in and he will have to call. i go all-in. he shows Q-8 diamonds. well played.

I do like how I played this hand, but it's always easy to play your hand when you flop the virtual nuts.

scott, two things stood out above others on that hand, and these are elementary 101 type things, but i did not expect them from you. the re-examining of your cards when you knew damn well they were diamonds, and the overbetting of the flop which seemed like you were trying to take IT down instead of me.
nice hand.

That means a lot coming from you Travis! Now the score between us is 12 to 1.

[Chipless Wonder]

Have to resurface this thread, since I've only gotten the better of Travis one time in poker history.

[Drimson King]

ahhhh... bringing that one up again. this seems like it was so long ago, but i guess it was only december. we've certainly come a long way since then. this was a period where, as i stated earlier, i watched scott make what i viewed as vast improvements to his game. i feel i have matured in that area as well, but don't know if anything would have been different had we played the hand last night. once again, nice play. see you at the final table friday, and hang onto those chips.