Need to Vent. KK vs AA

Sometimes when you play poker, the cards just don't go your way.  Yes, it's a game of skill and you need to think of the "long run" and the odds and the law of large numbers and all that but when the cards go against you in the short run, it sucks.

Recently I was in a tournament and had been running nicely, taking a few pots here and there and building up my stack losing only a few small pots.  Then I was dealt a pocket pair of kings.  KK. Cowboys. The second best starting hand you can have.  You only get pocket kings about once in 220 hands, so when you get them, you want to cash in on them.  The best way is to get an opponent heads-up and as long as he doesn't have pocket aces, you are about a 4 to 1 favorite or better, like 9 to 1.  Of course, if he does have AA in the hole, your kings are about a 4 to 1 underdog, but that doesn't happen very often. Well, at least not to most Texas Hold'em poker players.  Unless, of course, you are me.

Of course, the player in the Small Blind looks at his cards and raises.  I re-raise all in and he calls, showing me his two aces.

So I do the numbers.  It turns out that at a table with 9 players, if you are holding KK, the probability that any one of your opponents is holding AA is about 3.5%.  About 1 out of every 28 or 29 times you have KK you should expect to run into AA.

I had KK three times over the last 6 hours or so that I have played Texas Hold'em.  That in itself is something.  In 6 hours I probably was dealt around 180 hands.  Seeing that you only expect to get KK once every 221 hands, it is a bit unusual to get KK three times in 180 hands.  What is astounding is that 2 of the three times I had KK, I wound up facing an opponent holding AA.  Simply astounding.  To make matters worse, the final time I had KK I improved to three of a kind and was ahead until an ace showed up and my kings were a very strong second place finish - the worst place to be in a poker game.

Hopefully, things will turn around for me.  I hope its in a big money game!!!