The Janus hand

Janus was the Roman god of duality, among other things. There is no hand in poker with more of a dual nature than pocket aces. I hereby dub it the Janus hand :-) Pockets aces can easily double you up; unfortunately, they can just as easily bounce you out of a tournament. I experienced the latter outcome in the second MTT I entered last night, on just the second hand. I'm certain I've never exited an MTT that early before. Let me check the archives ... Shows you how much I know! :-) There were fully four examples of "prior art".

Here's how the Janus hand went down ... oops! I just discovered my memory was faulty again. I didn't have rockets after all. I was dealt a suited big slick (ace king), and paired my ace on the flop. I was up against an opponent who'd been dealt pocket queens. After the flop, I was a 91% favorite to win the hand. Unluckily for me, my opponent spiked a queen on the turn, and his set of queens held up. Out in a New York minute!

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE    17500  2500       6    70     413   96   136        0
MTT   NLHE    45000  5000       6     2      26    8     -        0
MTT   NLHE    17500  2500       6    33     362   96   183        0

delta: $-90,000
MTT NLHE balance: $2,537,048
2017 balance: $459,025
balance: $11,876,855

The Janus hand

As I've had occasion to observe before, memory is a funny thing. What I remember best from last night's session is that I got dealt pocket rockets twice in the second MTT NLHE I played, won the first time I got them, and hit the rail the second. That gave me the idea for this post's title. Pocket aces are truly the Janus hand; they can break you just as easily as they can make you. Looking over the hand histories tonight, however, I discovered that I was wrong in every particular but one :-) I was only dealt rockets once in that tournament, but did hit the rail. Remarkably, I hit the rail in the first tournament I played with the very same holding. Somehow I remembered that lost hand as a win, and put it in the wrong tournament.

I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've ever had what I call "aces out" twice in a single session. My consolation is that at least I made the money the second time :-)

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE      870   130       9    20     978  243   384        0
MTT   NLHE      870   130       6    46     741  192   117     1934

delta: $-66
MTT NLHE massive balance: $21,662
balance: $10,063,396