This would put me on life tilt.

[The Velour Fog]

[ QUOTE ]
He explained something to me over lunch that is fundamental to good poker, and probably somewhat obvious, but I had never understood it.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
Fuller wins his table just before the break!

Steve Levitt and Thomas Fuller are heads up for the table. Levitt raises to 4100 and Fuller calls.

The flop is {K-Spades}{Q-Clubs}{8-Diamonds}

Fuller checks, Levitt bets 7200 and Fuller calls .

The turn is the {7-Clubs}

Fuller bets 8,000, Levitt raises to 20,000, Fuller comes over the top all in for another 18,000 more and Levitt makes the call.

They open their hands, Fuller has {9-Spades}{6-Diamonds} for an open ended straight draw and Levitt has {K-Clubs}{9-Hearts} for top pair.

The river card is the {5-Clubs} giving Fuller the win and sending him to the final table

[/ QUOTE ]

[cbmoore]

The next big pot we played came when I raised the button to 4500 with [9s 6h]. He called. The flop came [Ks Qc 7d] and he checked. I bet bigger than I usually do, 7.5k I think, as I had earlier when I flopped top set with [Ks Kc] and had shown the hand. He called. The turn came [8c] and he led out for 7k. I considered taking the cheap card but instead decided to stay aggressive and represent a big hand and raised to 20k. He thought for a long time and then raised 18k more. At this point I sat back in my chair and sighed, which was a mistake. People told me later I looked really weak when I did this, though I don't know if Stephen was paying attention. I thought for quite a while about whether to just call or not and then sort of suddenly decided Stephen probably didn't have a big hand, was feeler-raising, and would have to fold one pair if I moved in for his last 100k. I declared all-in and Stephen didn't take too long before calling with [Kd 9h].

Courtesy of Thomas Fuller's Blog
http://gnightmoon2006.blogspot.com/

[cbmoore]

His thought process:

I think I made a good poker play here, and my opponent played the hand quite poorly. I was aggressive every step of the way and my betting represented a huge hand. However, I made a gigantic mistake. I had been pushing Stephen around lately and I failed to consider his psychological state. If I had not gone all-in in the face of heavy betting on two of the previous few hands, Stephen might have given me more credit for a big hand and maybe laid his top pair down. As it was, Stephen was likely sick of getting pushed around and felt he needed to take a stand.
Before I had processed what was happening, the [5c] was on the felt and they were counting the chips down. I immediately started apologizing to Stephen for the bad beat and told him how well he had played. His wife had just come over to watch and said "so he just hit a straight on the river?" I felt really terrible, but the match was over and I was going to a WSOP final table.