Demetriou the poker monster

I've been shit on the blogging front of late.

One reason for this is that one of my pet hobbies/projects over the last few months has become Texas Hold 'Em Poker. I've been entering various live tournaments and was having quite a bit of good fortune. Until the last week or so.

If you're not interested, this will bore you to tears. So to strike a compromise, I'll be brief with the piece and move on.

A recent re-buy tournament saw me get rivered by an Ace in an early hand to lose all my chips. I re-bought, and a few hands later I'm big blind and check in 7 9 7.

I'm holding 7 5.

I check and the small blind to my left goes all in. All others fold, I call. He shows 7 deuce.

We're on our backs and he hits the deuce on the turn and fills a full house. I re-buy again.

A few hands after that, I've got King Jack and I raise. Several players call and the flop comes King Jack 7.

Action comes to me, and I push all in. The player to act after me calls and shows down trip 7s. I fail to catch up and get knocked out. A-fucking-gain.

I re-buy for a third time, and soon after I get pocket Aces. A player half way round the table raises aggressively and I push all in. He calls and shows King Jack. I've got his arse dominated. Flop comes with a Jack, turn card a Jack, river card a motherfucking King. The bastard has filled a full-house from a fucking King high hand.

I re-buy once more, by now fuming and disconsolate. Somehow, I manage to limp to the break with double the starting stack, which with the blinds and average pot being quite high, was shite.

A few hours later, I limp onto the final table with about ten thou. I call an all in with Jacks and they hold out against tens. Suddenly I'm back in the running. Several people got K.O'd and there are now 7 of us left. Two places away from the money.

I then get dealt QQ. The player to my right raises to 5,000. The blinds are 800 / 1,600 so it represented some sort of hand, but he was a tight player and I figured that had he made a good pair, he'd have pushed all in. So I put him on Ace 'X', probably a high Ace 'x' at that. Rather than chase his weak arse away, I simply re-raise him to 10,000 and see what happens.

All the other players get the fuck out of my way, because they know I only play strong at this position. The initial raiser puts me all in, and I call.

He shows: Ace Queen.

So his Queen is dead, and he has only one live card - the Ace. His hand wasn't suited, so a runner-runner flush was unlikely; all I didn't want to see was a fucking Ace.

Flop comes: 7 6 Ace. Turn, fuck. River, off. He has me covered by 300 chips and I die.

What does it fucking take for me to not get a bad beat? Why is it I never come from behind to win a hand? The improbable just keeps happening? If there are any poker experts out there who could offer a sore-headed angry fucker some advice, I'm all ears. Because this is really twisting my shit.