It's the cards!

The cards dealt to you in a MTT is what often causes you to lose...now I know that many of you are saying...what is this moron talking about, of course it's the cards. Well I'm not talking about your opponent getting AA more than his share of the time or your opponent outdrawing you. What I am talking about is...you settle in and say now I'm gonna play this one smart and solid and then you get borderline cards and decide to see the flop because you can limp in and then an opponent raises, but it's only a x1 raise and you still want to see the flop so you call, then you didn't hit however it did put you on a drawing hand and even though it was raised to you, you still have pot odds so you call and you end up losing the hand. Now you are out of position with position cards and you say what the heck, I can limp in and see...well it goes on and on and all these harmless hands are draining your stack and now you get into trouble because you finally got AK suited and try to win the hand, but your moron opponent was calling everything with his pocket 2's and you didn't hit.

What started off with a plan of playing solid went astray then not only leading you in the wrong direction it got you away from your game plan and then finally put you on the donk plan...if only those early tempting...want to see the flop cards didn't show up, I could have played my game..."the curse of the carrot"

Stay away from the curse of the carrot at all cost and play your game...these bait cards rerely work out and only draw you away from a winning plan!

Good read CS, I notice i'm often guilty of that. I often save a single hand history of where i lost a lot of chips in a tourney and review it later to find that I played it like a total idiot. It wasn't until I started leaving my reasoning with the hand history that i understood what i was doing half the time. And what i've found is that I either was trying to make a play off them showing weakness, or I got a good price on a hand and wouldn't lay it down after hitting a pair, knowing it was on the weaker side of the spectrum.

As with high pockets, it's hard to lay down a hand when you hit it. Sometimes you wait so long to finally hit a flop, you don't take a second to weigh it in with the other possible hands and you keep playing it thinking it's worth more than losing half your stack.

I nominate this for post of the month if this was 2005 :P

My single biggest problem...when will i learn that weakness often represents strength too....If i go out in a tourny it's either on a bluff or losing a preflop all in where im 90% of the time ahead...

I might start doing that, looking at HH after tournies and learning from them.

Good posts both of you.