shooting star final hand

Well, I woke up this morning and, yes, it was Friday, and no, the hand I busted out on was not a bad dream. Darn. As I told my friend Andrew, you know you probably made a bad play when you are posting about it on the 2+2 (poker discussion website) psychology forum instead of the tournament strategy forum. Ah well... life goes on.

For those of you who are interested, I started the hand with about 180k in chips, with blinds at 2k-4k and 500 ante. I had 63 suited diamonds on the button. Cutoff (guy to my right) open raises for 3x the blind. I call because I know this guy is a big bluffer. Still, this is not the kind of hand I want to call him down with if I make just 1 pair. So, the preflop call is probably a small mistake.

The flop comes J34 with one diamond and two clubs. He checks, and I bet 25k. He checkraises me to 55k. Now, I just outthought myself. I felt this guy would just call with his really strong hands, and that his checkraise was more of a "probe" bet, eg with a hand like pocket tens or nines. because I read him as weak (or at least not suprstrong), I felt like I could push him off of many hands better than mine, or, if he called, had a fair chance of outdrawing him on the turn or river. So I decided to try to take down the 80k pot right there by going all in.

He had KJ and called after a bit of thought. a 7 came on the turn, giving me a 3,5, or 6 as outs, but none came on the river.

Despite my "logic" above, the single biggest problem with my move is that I was at the "best" of the 4 remaining tables, the only table that did not have a pro on it. And, similar to a hand on wednesday when I took a conservative route because I thought I could take advantage of other weak players at the table, I should have done the same here. In the first two hours, a third of the remaining field of 36 had already busted. A bit more patience would probably have meant at least double my winnings.

So, one last time, I apologize to those who have been supporting me. I cannot begin to describe how much the excitement that you all have shown in this endeavor has meant to me. I have no doubt that I would not have gone as far as I did without all of you behind me. Thank you, Thank you, Thank You!