Recently I played an interesting hand at a fairly small tournament. There were about seventy players, only a few of them were any good. It was a timid table with players limping all the time and playing mediocre hands. The blinds were 50/100 at the second level, with chip stacks starting at 5000.
I picked up KJ in middle position. There had been a few limpers before me but since I knew these players would easily dispatch of their hands I decided my KJ was good enough to play it and thus I raised it to 300, the standard three times the big blind.
The player next to me, who was one of the few (if not the only one) good players at the table, raised it to 600, the big blind called and, obviously, so did I.
The board came 632. Not much of a hit for anybody, I figured, so I fired again, this time 1500. The player to my left immediately called and so did the big blind.
By now I knew I was beat so I decided to check and fold this hand out if it wasn’t raised anymore.
The turn brought the Jack so now I had top pair with a decent kicker. I had to shoot so I bet about potsize, which was around 6000 now. The player behind me raised the mimimum, the button folded and I had to call in essence orchestrating my own all-in on the river and getting beat and broke by pocket Kings.
The point to this story is, that even though KJ seems like a decent hand (which it arguably is), it’s one of those hands that can get you in real trouble if you’re not seriously cautious because there are a whole lot of hands that do beat you.
When you pick up a hand like KJ, KT, A9, QT don’t mistaken en remember that it is a nice hand, but not a monster and so not worth getting broke on.
