Event #9 1.5k PLHE

I knew coming into this one the challenge was going to be staying patient, and I couldn't do it. I played tight for the first three hours and then did this:

Blinds 75-150

I opened to 400 from the hijack with J6s. The small blind raised the pot to 1350. I called. The flop was Q63 with one of my suit. He went all-in for a pot bet and I called.

This was the silliest hand I've played in quite a while. Based on tells I was basically certain my opponent did not have a big hand, but calling with J6s preflop was still an outlandish mistake. His money is going in on the flop and I am not going to be able to call the flop shove enough of the time to make the preflop call reasonable, even if I know for certain he is weak.

So why in the world did I do this?

1. I got overexcited making such a concrete physical read. It's rare that you can make a preflop read with that level of certainty, where you basically rule out big hands. I was so excited by this read that I forgot what a piece of crap I had myself.

2. I hate letting these online tournament pros reraise me. I have it out for young internet pros. I take special relish in beating them. I really wanted to stick it to this player, in particular, as he made a point of letting the whole table know that he was an online tournament pro.

3. I knew if this hand got shown down no one would mess with me without a big hand the rest of the day. This was shortsighted, however, as our table was breaking soon.

4. I had probably grown bored and frustrated, perhaps subconsciously, at being crammed in ten-handed at a table of mostly young online pros playing in a situation where it was most profitable to fold most hands.

5. I was never too psyched up to play this event. I don't think the WSOP should have a $1500 pot limit hold em. I would be fine with a higher buy-in, but the "advantages" of pot-limit are basically nullified without deeper stacks. With one-third the prizepool of the no-limit events, coming in the midst of a string of low buy-in no-limits, I really wasn't excited.

Of course this is pretty silly, as any $1500 poker tournament should still get me excited to play. It's not like I'm such a high-roller that $1500 is a small buy-in.

So my opponent had pocket sevens, I turned a flush draw but lost, then ran my 550 stack up to 6600 before busting, then went and had a nice picnic with Bailey and some friends for the second straight night.

It probably shouldn't be a challenge for me to play my A-game in these $1500 tournaments, but sometimes it is. Today I wasn't up to the challenge, but there's another $1500 event tomorrow.