Drawing dead in real time

It's never fun to discover after the fact that you were drawing dead on the river on your final hand of a tournament. It's even less fun to find this out in real time, before the river card has even been dealt. Least fun of all is to find this out in real time, after having had every expectation of winning the hand. That's precisely what happened to me last night.

First of all, an explanation: you can see what your chances of winning a hand are before the final cards are dealt as long as no more bets are possible, thanks to a helpful option of the PokerStars software. I'm sure this feature can be turned off if you want to, but I've never wanted to. No more bets are possible when all the players remaining in the hand have either gone all in or called the largest all-in bet.

Here's how my painful hand went down: I was dealt 7s 6d, the flop came 4c 5s 5c, and the turn was the 8 of diamonds, giving me a straight. I shoved on the turn, and got one caller. Cards went on their backs, and the PokerStars software displayed that I had 0% chance of winning the hand, before even dealing the river card. My reaction was essentially "Wait - what???" The explanation: my opponent had been dealt 4d 4h, so he'd flopped the moon, the sun and the stars. I had a meager 1.92% chance of winning the hand after the flop, and, as previously mentioned, a 0% chance after the turn.

To add insult to injury, my percent at turn utility informs me that my holding, with that flop and turn, beats 90.42% of all other holdings. I got my money in as bad as you can get it in, when I thought I was getting it in as good as you can get it in. Go figure :-)

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT-R NLHE    43500  6500       9    58      66   15    24        0

delta: $-150,000
MTT with rebuys NLHE balance: $33,318,500
2018 balance: $-63,000
balance: $45,450,260