A bad read leads to an early exit.

Played the PartyPoker freeroll this evening. My early hands were fairly unremarkable. I won a few small pots but nothing to justify wasting electrons in describing. Picked up pocket 4s which turned a full house, and was modestly paid on them from my opponent who rivered a straight and called my three-bet. Put me up to about 120k in chips.

A few hands later, I open A9 of clubs, my opponent re-raises. It folds around to the player on my right who calls. I also call. Flop TA9 rainbow. Two pair: nice. Player on my right checks, I check (in hindsight, I should have bet something here, but it's easy to be wise after the event), and the original re-raiser checks. Turn is a 6. Nothing worrying, and it's on this street I bet. 30k, just slightly over the pot, as the player to my right is reasonably short and has roughly that in chips, and I have my eye on them. Plus, I think I have a read on the original re-raiser. They call, and short stack folds. Turn is the Q.

At this point, given their opening re-raise, I think I'm up against pocket kings. My reasoning being that there's an ace in my hand and on the flop, and I'm assuming the shorter stack on my right called with an ace, meaning my re-raiser can't have pocket aces. And I'm not sure they re-raise with KJ or 78, so they don't have a straight. Which leaves pocket kings, maybe ace-king. I think jacks and queens probably fold on the turn, and therefore I'm ahead. So I put my remaining stack in, 81k into an 87k pot. They call and I'm right - they don't have AA, but I'm also very, very wrong. Their hand isn't KK or AK, it's AQ. And that filthy, treasonous river sends me to an early rail. So no freeroll cash for me this week. Still, that's poker.