AK < KJ AIPF

I will always be happy when you call me with a weaker hand, but if you hold King-Jack, please, just fold. It is The Iron Man. I just can't beat it. Four times in recent history I have lost to KJ while holding AK (all in pre-flop of course.) Granted, the statistics geeks will scream out that four occasions is simply too small a sample size to determine that AK is bad luck (sorry KevMath) but I have a blog to update so bear with me...

One of those four times was at the final table of The Daily Dollar recently. I had never felt more in control of a game in my entire life. I'd made final tables before, but never one this soft; everything was on track for me to take it down. With the buy in so low, you know the field is going to be stacked with clowns. The final table was no different. Everyone was a clown. They all might as well have used the clown avatar. Some angry clowns, some confused clowns...

Of corse, I should have recognized that false sense of security as soon as I felt it. I should have recognized AK for the desperate, un-made, gamblicious hand that it is, and somehow played it differently. I forget how many big blinds I shoved (16?) but I remember that I was in middle position and the pot was unopened. The BB was a clown who had just doubled up to become one of the chip leaders. He called with KJ off. This was for about %40 of his stack; he would have had 20xbb left if he had lost. I was thrilled to see his hand until the board rolled out xxJxJ

TONIGHT'S UNLUCKINESS:
Getting into the spirit of this post, I'll take this opportunity to shit on AK some more. Here's the scene... 6-handed Super Turbo sng, $5 buy in, $20 for 1st place, $10 for 2nd... When we got to heads up I was out-chipped like 4-to-1 but I battled my way back to practically even stacks. He had slightly more chips, but I had the skill-edge. Of course, all that hard work was for nothing. Third verse, the same as the first. AK vs KJ AIPF, board rolls out JQxxx. GG