Ho hum

Took a week off from poker, then played home game's $130 one-rebuy tournament on Sunday.

Not good.

1. First hand of tournament, 16 players, start with 5,000 chips. Early position player limps, all fold, I call on button with A7h. Flop KT7, check around. Turn A. Interesting. Solid player bets out 125 from small blind, limper calls, I make it 525. SB reraises to 2000 straight, limper folds, I fold.

I can beat some worse two-pair hands here, but I felt good about the laydown against this player. He is a fearful type who I think would put me on QJ when I raised unless he had it himself.

2. After winning a couple of decent pots with AA and KK, I open AKh in middle position to 150 (blinds 25-50, by the way), only the big blind, a good tournament player who respects my play, calls.

Flop K76, two clubs. Check, I bet 300, call. Turn T, he bets out 550. Normally this bet is someone trying to protect a pair, usually top pair, thinking the raiser has A-high. I call to see what he does on the river. After a blank hits, he quickly and confidently bets 1500.

I do not think he would make this bet with KQ. This is a typical "bluff or the nuts" situation for this guy, and he doesn't generally try to bluff me. I reluctantly fold.

I'm not too happy with this hand. In retrospect, I think a much better line would have been to raise his turn bet to 1200-1400 or so. That would have defined this player's hand much better. If he raises, I can give it up and sleep better at night. If he calls, I should be able to get a free showdown on the river.

3. Blinds 50-100. The most aggressive and far and away the best player at the table opens for 300 from middle position. His opening range here is literally as wide as 22+, A2s+, A8o+, any two broadway, and any two suited connectors (including one- and two-gappers, down to even 52s, 42s and 32s). He has already doubled up or close to it.

All fold to me with JJ in the small blind and about 4500 chips. My default line against him is to just call and try to trap him after the flop with any playable hand in this spot. For whatever reason, I decide to stand up this time and reraise him, making it 1000 to go.

I'm hoping to take the pot there, but he calls with little hesitation. Flop is a terrible AQ9 rainbow. I bet 1800, he immediately reraises all-in, I immediately fold, and he laughs, saying I was trying to bluff him. I am crippled, having lost more than half of my stack.

I think I played this hand about as bad as I could, especially against this player.

First, preflop: With this stack size, my reraise puts me in a pretty bad spot. I am in the small blind with a hand that will not be easy to play against an aggressive player. By bloating the pot, any continuation bet will commit most of my chips to the pot. This is not good with an overcard likely to come more than 50 percent of the time.

Also, I think my raise was too small. With this hand, if I am going to raise at all, I should have made it 1500 at least to cut down on his pot odds. (As played, he called 700 to win 1400, plus whatever he could win after the flop.)

As bad as it seems in general, my right play may have been to just move in for the whole 4500. AA, KK and QQ will call and crush me, of course, but he is the kind of player who would be willing to race with a lower pair, AK or AQ.

After the flop, given the way I played it preflop, I think I have to check and fold with my stack size. The continuation bet (which was a bit big anyway) put more than half of my chips in the pot, and I couldn't stand a reraise.

I feel sick about a check, though, because I know it is like handing the pot to him when I have already invested nearly a quarter of my stack preflop.

A butchering all the way around. In this situation, I now think my best plays were either:

1. Call 300, then make a large check-raise (possibly all-in) on favorable flops. Check-fold on flops like the actual one.

2. Move all-in before the flop, with the possibility of getting called by a worse hand.

I got the rest of my money in a few hands later with AQc vs. AKd and didn't suck out.

Making money in poker is hard enough without fucking things up yourself. I feel like I did that yesterday.

Did I run into straights in the first two hands? Would he be crazy enough to move in with JT on the third hand? Did I get bluffed there, too? Did I get bluffed at all? Am I going crazy?

I wish I could give my opponents truth serum at the end of the day to find out what happened.

Those decisions are what separate the winners from the losers at the poker table.