Preemptive immediate service

The most memorable hand of last night's session, as is generally the case for memorable hands, was one that I lost :-) I was dealt pocket rockets (a pair of aces). An opponent acting before me bet big enough to put me all in if I called, and I did. When he turned over AJo (ace jack offsuit), I was very happy; I knew he was a big underdog. Running the numbers, he had only a 6.75% chance of winning. However, unfortunately for me, he received preemptive immediate service from the poker gods. What do I mean by that? First, here's the definition of immediate service (from my blog post of September 20, 2015):

One of my favorite poker commentators is Nick Wealthall. He provides commentary for online tournaments on PokerStars. One  phrase I really like which he uses quite often is "immediate service"; it refers to hitting a straight or flush draw as soon as possible, in other words on the turn.

With that in mind, preemptive immediate service is immediate service which comes on an even earlier street, i.e. on the flop. The flop in this case came Qh Kh Tc, giving my opponent a straight, and reducing my winning chances to a meager 5.35%. After the turn of 7d, I was officially drawing dead. Not a fun way to hit the rail, to be sure. I played one more tournament after that, to get the bad taste out of my mouth.

By the way, my prediction that last night's session would be my final one of 2016 was wrong; I'm about to play some poker right now, at 1:52pm on the last day of the year :-)

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE    45000  5000       6    44     139   36    36    75000
MTT   NLHE    17500  2500       6     8     486  114     -        0
MTT   NLHE    45000  5000       6    18     136   36    46        0
MTT   NLHE    17500  2500       6    27     535  132   177        0
MTT   NLHE    17500  2500       6    75     436  114    56    48000
MTT   NLHE    45000  5000       6    27     109   30    36        0
MTT   NLHE    17500  2500       6    50     365   96    93    26100

delta: $-80,900
MTT NLHE balance: $2,166,548
2016 balance: $966,866
balance: $11,667,230