Eighty percent favorite?

One day I'll learn what eighty percent favorite means. As far as my previous understanding, favorite means that whoever the favorite is is most likely to win, as in that person will win a majority of the time. However, through my whole bad streak from December through January I had discovered that the meaning of a favorite is very closely based on who the deemed favorite is on a personal basis. For example, favorite seemingly has a reversed definition when applied to me.

Take the recent hand where I had QQ against 44 in the $220 tournament at Chumash.
QQ Win: 81.18%
44 Win: 18.82%
As we all know by now, the SD hit a 4 on the flop and I was practically drawing dead, as I was a 10.81% to win after a rainbowed flop of 4-K-9.

Then last night I was playing my SnG and I was cruising as usual down to the bubble. The blinds were at 50/100, I was the chip leader with around 5500, with the rest of the chips evenly disbursed among the 3 others. I raised to 300 on the button with AKo. Then the shortest stack pushed from the small blind for about 2500. Now from watching this guy from earlier I knew he wouldn't have pushed anything huge here, he most likely would have made a decent reraise given the blinds at the time. He had also seen me trying to bully the table with my aggressive style, but I had made laydowns on several occassions preflop. My read here was that he was on a steal trying to take control of my button raise.

If he had a small pocket pair, I was ok with a coin flip. I didn't think he had a medium pocket pair because of the way I'd seen him play throughout the tournament so far. My reads had been dead on so far in this SnG, so I went with my read that he was on a steal and, figuring I might even have him dominated if he pushed AQ or KQ, I called the 2500. He flips over KQh.

AKo Win: 69.33%
KQh Win: 29.55%
TIE: 1.12%

As you'll notice here, the AK is a 70-30 to win, or a 2.3 to 1 favorite. Yeah, there's that word again. Favorite. As you may notice, I am the favorite in this hand here preflop.

Flop: K-J-5 (rainbow)

AKo Win: 85.05%
KQh Win: 13.74%
TIE: 1.21%

Let me get into some math here. Even rounding up to the nearest percent, the AK is 85 to 14 to win, or over 6 to 1. A 6 to 1 FAVORITE. So any normal person would be happy in this situation, knowing that they're almost a sure lock to win the hand. The KQ has 3 outs to win on the turn with a Q, 3 outs. 3 out of 45 cards. 3/45=.0667. .0667, given the benefit of the round-up, is 7%. He is 7% to catch one of the 3 queens in the deck, but is given extra outs because of the runner-runner straight draw he has. So he's 13.74% to win the hand, and 7% to catch his Q. A normal person would have to expect to win this hand. But here's me: "NOOOOOOOOO DON'T DO IT!! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!"

Flop: K-J-5
Turn: Q

OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND ALL THAT IS HOLY!! He comes through with a Q, and just as I'm trying to convince myself that my bad streak is over. Through the 2 months that I deemed my bad run, this happened to me more than once out of every 10 times, thoroughly destroying the barrier of mathematical probability. But I have redraws though, a 10 for a straight or an A for a higher two pair. That's 7 cards I can catch to win out of the 44 left. 7/44=.1599, or basically 16%.

River: 9

Of course the river blanks and I'm knocked down to around 3000. So he catches his 7% Q, and I don't catch up. Ever.

After that hand the chips were just passing around and around and it was a pretty evenly matched game. Then a hand came up where I had a pocket pair and decided to push the flop. One player called off most of his chips on an overcard and a straight draw, where he was a 38% to win on the turn, and lo and behold his 38% comes through when he hits his straight on the river. So I took 4th and no money.

After that I decided to jump in the $20+2 $5000 added Sring Cleanup Bonus MTT, where first place was $2500+. I played like crap the whole way, but ended up as another over 6 to 1 favorite when my A9 was all-in against 88 on the flop.

Flop: 9-K-7

A9 Win: 86.36%
88 Win: 13.64%

Flop: 9-K-7
Turn: 10

A9 Win: 77.27%
88 Win: 22.73%

Let me tell you that right here, even though I am still over a 3 to 1 favorite, I already felt like I had lost the hand.

Flop: 9-K-7
Turn: 10
River: 8

88 wins and kicks my 6 to 1 favorite's ass. I decided to watch a movie and ended up falling asleep before I made it back to my computer, which might have been a good thing since I apparently wasn't going to win yesterday.

Now I know that you all might be thinking that losing hands like that in 3 games is nothing, and that because of how much I play (or used to anyways) in the long run of things I will win those hands. But like I said before, there was 2 months of hands like this where I was actually scared if I had someone dominated, cuz I could already sense that their magical card was coming on the turn. I came out of that state of mind and started trusting the mathematics of it all again last month, but the weird thing is last night in those hands I had those feelings again that I was going to lose. It was almost like ESP, and I could tell that they were going to catch one of their 3 outs on the turn, or fill their straight on the river.

But I'm really trying not to think like that, and I will just keep playing well and playing more and hopefully soon I'll be up and rollin like I once was. I'm probably gonna be out tonight, but I'm hoping to get in 2 SnGs at least, and I might blog some GOOD stuff that came out of last night as far as trusting reads and such. I got some sleep last night, so I should be able to make it past 10 o'clock without falling asleep tonight!

BTW, sorry for all the bitching, but I needed to vent :)

Adios.

Bankroll: $755