You’ll always have them at your table in a random homegame: amateurs who tell you they don’t like to play Aces. I can only say one thing to this kind of bullcrap: bring on those Aces, still the best hand preflop in NLHE!

Of course you’ll lose now and then with this hand, just like with every other hand. And sure it’s harsh when it happens to you two times in a row, just like it happened to me this week:

Yes this is harsh, and yes I would have preferred to win these hands instead of lose them, specifically because they were both played in the final phase of the tournament, but I’ll play them exactly the same again, anytime, anywhere.

I was grinding the $.10/.25 cashgames on PokerStars yesterday and I lost a pot of about 120 BB’s thanks to what you can call a bad beat. Although there are a lot of situations which are worse, it felt like a real classic one.

Maybe it was because the player on my left was already irritating me quite a while. Here’s the hand I’m talking about:

This guy minraises again and I logically call the reraise, considering the pot and implied odds. The flop is very nice, as it’s very likely that I flopped the best hand here. I lead out and when he minraises me again I decide to not fool around any longer. I happen to have outflopped his pair but have to dodge an OESD: I’m a 67% favorite here. River kills me.

Well, let’s be clear from the start: life is good. Sometimes it just doesn’t feel that way. Let that be the first lesson you learn on this blog, with many to follow .

That’s why I’ll kick off easily today with a little poker hand I wasn’t even involved in. If I’m playing online, I play on Pokerstars because I simply think it’s the best room out there. I play all kind of games as a matter fact. I like to grind the cash games on the micro stakes ($.10/.25) and I like tournaments with a field of 90 to 500 players. Besides Texas Hold’em I like to play some Pot Limit Omaha also now and then.

But what’s going on in this hand? I’m playing a MTT ($5 buy-in) on Pokerstars and the blinds are already high. Then this happens:

The standard raise in early position is a sign of a strong hand so I’m out without any doubt. But the SB decides to call with his pocket fours. Well on the flop it’s kind of a cold deck situation that they both flop their set. But ok, Player 6 was already way behind preflop so it’s kinda justice for Player 8. But the turn card IS a bad beat. I feel for player 8!