Last night, I played a SNG on PokerStars with PokerGeek, and though I played very solid poker most of the way down, I made two rookie mistakes that cost me everything.

Rookie mistake number one: I had a glass of wine with dinner. Then I had a glass of wine after dinner. Then I thought, "Hey, I'll call PokerGeek and see if he wants to play . . . " It's just plain stupid to play poker when your judgement is impaired, even if it's a mild buzz from a glorious bottle of Chianti.

PokerGeek was deeply involved in World of Warcraft, but I used my +2 Card Protector of The Ages to convince him to stop sewing a hat, or whittling a staff, or whatever he was doing in WoW to join me. We hopped into a game together, made a last-longer (which I won, and I will publicly flog PokerGeek until he pays up. Flog. Flog. Flog.) and waited for the game to begin.
It was a lot of fun. Chris and I ended up in a few pots together, and I think we just about split them. He pushed me off AQ when the flop was king high and he pushed. Of course, he showed trash. Good bet, Geek. Good bet. (flog)

It was a very tight/passive table, and I was able to steal blinds all the time, and my continuation bets were taking down pots more often than not. Like I said, it was a lot of fun.

Thanks to a combination of good cards, a bit of luck, and some solid reads on most of the table, I built up a very good-sized stack, and I used it to be as effective a bully as I could be. I got several walks when I was in the BB, and I started to feel pretty good about my chances of winning the last-longer (Flog! Flog! Flog!) and probably making the money, as well.

PokerGeek got quite short-stacked, but I let him double up when I protected him by dropping THE HAMMER and he paired his nine. Oops. That really pissed off the table, especially the guy who had paired his jack and folded to my bluff.

I forget howPokerGeek eventually busted, but I'm sure it will be on his blog, and I'm sure he'll explain why he was way ahead with 6-3o or whatever (flog) he had, and there were just five of us left . The table was so tight/weak that we got to what I like to call "The Lottery" level of the SNG, where the ratio of the blinds and antes to the average stack-size is so great, people start to push with anything. In fact, I watched the two shortest stacks trade chip position a couple of times by pushing against each other, and subsequently folding. I was just about tied with one other player for the lead, when I made my second -- and fatal -- Rookie Mistake: I got reckless and impatient, and lost focus.

I was UTG with pocket threes. The correct play here would have been to jsut let it go, or make a standard raise, and see what happened. If a super-short stack pushed, I would be probably be able to call, and if a larger stack played back, I'd have a decision to make.

Instead, I pushed without thinking at all. I'd like to blame the wine, women and song, but the truth is that I got impatient and thought, "oh, fuck it. Let's go." What a stupid thing to do after investing an hour in the game, but it's the truth, and a rookie mistake.

I was instacalled by the other chipleader, who at this point was 135 behind me. He turned over aces, I lost. One hand later, IGHN.

Stupid. Donkey. Play. Wil.

I was rightfully mocked by the table for making such an incredibly stupid play.

Poker is a game of decisions. The winning players make more good decisions than the losing players, and they don't make rookie mistakes. Last night, I made more good decisions than bad, but the bad ones were rookie mistakes that cost me dearly. And in No Limit Hold'Em, one bad mistake is all it takes to put you on the rail.