You have to be on the right track...

...if a bad beat is the only way to stop you.

As already said yesterday I'm gaining more and more confidence with my tournament play. This time I tried the $5.50 rebuy tournament at PokerStars. I'm usually not a big fan of rebuy tournaments but these (as well as the $3.30's) are really great. So much maniacial play. Pick the right spot and the reward can be big. This time I just needed one rebuy and the add-on to build an above average stack at the first break. A rebuy champion (about 20 rebuys) was very helpful to the whole table.

After the break I played only a few but very aggressive hands and increased my stack from 12,000 to 45,000 chips. With blinds 600/1,200 this was the key hand of the tournament:

MP3 ($21,380)
CO ($27,865)
Button ($5,595)
SB ($10,888)
BB ($6,555)
UTG ($26,874)
UTG+1 ($22,815)
Hero ($45,935)
MP2 ($140,850)

Preflop: Hero is MP1 with A, A.

UTG folds, UTG+1 calls $1200, Hero raises to $3,600, MP2 folds, MP3 folds, CO raises to $7,200, Button folds, SB folds, BB folds, UTG+1 folds, Hero raises to $45,810, CO calls $20,540 (All-In).

Flop: T, K, 3 (2 players, 1 all-in)
Turn: T (2 players, 1 all-in)
River: 6 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Final Pot: $75,625

Main Pot: $57,555 between CO and Hero.
Pot 2: $18,070 returned to Hero.

Hero has A, A (two pair, aces and tens).
CO has K, K (full house, kings full of tens).
Outcome: CO wins $57,555. Hero wins $18,070.

Well, there's nothing I could have done different. My money went in with the best hand and I was a huge favorite. But it hurts to lose such a key hand that would have put myself in a good position for making it deep into the tournament. I busted about 30 minutes later on 220th of 1,925 after more than 3 hours of play. Winning $37.82 is almost meaningless in that situation.

Oh, and sorry for that bad beat story. I usually don't like to write bad beat stories. But this hand kept buzzing through my head. So I hope to get it out of my head after writing about it. Oh, and to add insult to injury: About half an hour earlier I was forced to lay down my raised QQ's against a re-raise and a re-re-raise. I was sure that at least one of them had AA or KK. It turned out that I had given them too much credit. They played AQ and AJ (all the money went in pre-flop) and I would have won that hand. But I don't like to moan about that hand. Of course winning that hand would have left me in a much better position after my cracked aces but playing it at all under that circumstances would have been a huge mistake!