Coolerments

I don’t really like to use this space to complain about bad beats or coolers.  I run pretty good in the blonkaments so I should not be one to complain.  What is great about poker is that the strangest, most improbable things happen.  Sometimes they are truly long shot type occurrences, and other times they just appear that way based on how the human mind works.  Running KK into AA all-in preflop twice in the span of about 12 hands is one of those crazy freak statistical anomalies that happen from time to time.  Throw in getting bounced a couple blonkaments earlier in the same exact situation, and you may think the Poker Gods have it in for me. 

So I played my first BBT4 event of the week with last night’s Mookie.  I chipped up to about 4k in chips about 30 minutes in and pick up KK.  I played it straight forward.  I opened 3x to T150.  Somebody reraised it to about T500, and I re-reraised to T1500 and next thing you know we are all in preflop.  With around 3k stacks and blinds at 25/50 its going to go down like that if you open raise or like the other guy played it if you are acting after a raise, but if you play KK straight forward against heavy resistance, all of the chips should go in preflop.  So when I was calling the guys preflop push eventually, I got a pretty good feeling that I was up against AA.  I am sorry though.  There is no way I am not getting it all-in preflop with KK in a blonkament whenever possible.  Same goes with most MTTs.  The chances are simply too large in a blonkament that you are not up against AA.  72 and 22 are in the range on many a blonkey here.  You simply get your chips in with KK and take your lumps if you are against AA.  Hopefully this all washes out when you have AA vs KK.  I have folded KK preflop in a cash game, but the stack depth is needed to even attempt that one.  In a MTT, by the time your alarm bells start going off in a KK vs. AA preflop raising battle, you are probably already close to priced in against the actual AA.  For example in the hand above, when the other guy shoves for about 3k, and my AA bells start ringing, I need to call 1500 for a 6000+ pot.  Not quite priced in, but pretty close to my 1/5 shot of cracking AA.  Any chance at all that I am against KK, QQ, AKs, AK or worse, and you simply got to run it.  You are priced in to the range big time.

So I lose ¾ of my stack to AA, and am sitting at about 1k in chips, and feeling a bit hopeless.  About an orbit later, I pick up KK in the T150 BB.  There is a limp and then a raise to T1050.  They guy on the button, thinks and then calls.  I shove my last chips, looking at more than a triple-up to get back in it.  I would find out the initial raiser had AA and IGHN.  Coolerments!

The KK vs. AA situation is pretty rare.  You will be dealt KK or AA about once every 220 hands.  The odds of this match up are not 220 x 220 to 1 as some people think.  Let’s look at the odds of the first situation.  First off it was only an interesting situation because I was dealt KK in the first place.  Even though that only happens every 220 hands I will take it as a given.  So what are the chances that I am up against AA given that I have KK?  Assuming a 9-handed table than it is 220/8 or 27.5 to 1.  The chances of any given hand being exactly me with KK and one of the other 8 at the table with AA is over 6000-1.  So what were the odds that given I had KK, I would run it into AA and then 12 hands later run KK into AA exactly again?  27.5 to 1 for the first thing to happen, and then 12 shots at a 6000 to one chance or about 500 to 1 shot.  So once out of every 13,500 time you pick up KK, not only will you run it into AA, but you will pick it up again within a dozen hands and run it into AA again.

Fucking coolerments!