Grrrrr.....

166 person $3+R NLHE qualifier to a $625+35 WSOP main event satellite tonight is why I'm up so damn late. Top two spots paid a ticket, 3rd place paid out $305. I spent $9, with only the initial rebuy and the add-on. Played for four damn hours only to crash out in 5th place. The real pivotal hand occurred with 5 people left:

I was in a solid third place, with the two chip leaders at $250k or so, and me at $180k or so. I was in the big blind with AKo. Blinds at 2k-4k. The chip leader raises from MP up to $16k, and the short stack in the small blind pushes for $50k. I call, the chip leader calls. Flop comes TJQ rainbow. Nice :)

There's about 150k in the pot right now and I'm in the mode of, figure out how much money I can get into the middle of the pot. Since there's a dry side pot a check probably won't induce a bluff, but I figure if I can throw a small value bet, I can get a call from a pair. I bet out $20k, and the chip leader called with all kinds of undue haste. Nice :)

Then the river comes, a freaking disaster: another damn jack. Now there's TJQJ on the board, and my straight doesn't feel so great any more. TT, JJ, QQ, JQ, and JT are all in the possible hands that the chip leader has. I slow down and decide to see if I can't get him to check it down. I check. The chip leader pushes all in. Crap!

This wasn't really an overbet, but it was if you just include the size of the side pot, and there was no way it could be a bluff. And about the only hand where that was possible that I had beat was AJ, which I didn't think was likely. This was no donkey, and he knew that my out of position call of the all-in with nothing invested meant real strength. He has to believe I could have AK here, and that meant he either had AK himself or had AK beat. I didn't see any other real possibilities. I folded.

The other thing was, with the short stack eliminated, I didn't care that the chip leader increased his chip lead, since the payout was flat. I didn't want the short stacks confronting each other and giving me another contender for 3rd place, but the rich getting richer didn't affect me at all.

Still, I groaned when the chip leader turned over AK, and the short stack flipped over ----- pocket tens!!! CRAP!!! The last thing I wanted to do was triple another guy up, and throw away another 20k to boot. That put me down into 4th place out of five, and the short stack doubled up soon after, making me the short stack. Shit. I eventually got all my chips in the middle with AK, and had the misfortune of running into QQ. I lost that last race and crashed out. What a waste of four hours of damn near as good a poker as I've ever played.