I'm playing 2-2 NL at Isle of Capri in Lake
Charles. It's a Wednesday night, but pretty busy. They had about 9 or
10 tables full and a 30 player $40 tourney. The wait for the NL tables
was about 30 minutes. I went downstairs and played some slots. When my
name was called, I bought in for $200. It was about 1pm.
I immediately start winning money. Within 2 hours I'm up to $500. I
get moved from table to table until I finally get to a "made" table. It
is around 7pm. My flight is 10pm out of Houston, which is (at the very
minimum) 90 minutes away. I gotta return the rental car, check baggage,
go through security, etc. I call the airlines for later flight. The
next flight is 6am Thursday. I'm out in the parking lot on my cell
phone and smile real big! I reschedule for the 6am flight. I'm going to
pull an all-nighter!
I get back to the table and everyone laughs when I tell them I
cancelled the flight I had been talking about and decided to stay in
the poker room all night. Then I start winning more money. At around
10:30pm (9.5 hours), I've got $995 ($83.68/hour). I make an
announcement (bad karma move) to the table. "One more little red chip,
and I'm outta here fellas!" Earlier in the evening when I had reached
$500 I made a set-in-stone goal of $1,000. I promised myself I would
quit at $1,000.
At around 2am I get dealt AcJc. I raise it up to $20 and get two
callers. The flop comes with two clubs and to be honest I don't
remember the cards. Everyone checks. The turn doesn't yield me the
club, either. It gets checked around to a guy two positions to my left.
I really don't like this dude. He was a quiet older man, but really
rude and pissy when he did talk. He straddled and asked the dealer to
time people in tough situations, etc. He would always raise unusual
amounts out of the middle of nowhere. I knew he was bluffing, but never
saw anyone call to know for sure. He raises it $50. The other guy folds
and I call without hesitation, just in case I want to bluff the river.
The river wasn’t my club either. I check. He cries out, “$200”. The
first thing I noticed was that he left himself about $450 in chips. In
all honesty, if you offered me $1,000,000 today, I couldn’t tell you
what those 5 cards were in front of the dealer. I read the board 1,000
times. The very best hand he could have is trips. No straight
possibility. No flush possibility. No pair on the board. The absolute
best hand he could have is trips. I pulled my cards up off the table to
fold. I had already taken a good 3 minutes contemplating. You all know
that 3 minutes at a poker table is a long time. Then I realized
something. He wouldn’t shut up!
He had been talking to the guy next to him the entire time. He was
going on and on about bullshit. I took one last look at my cards and
said to myself, “Yep, I still have Ace high!” I stared him down and
smiled. “Call!” That’s right! I called with Ace high. He immediately
says, “Good call,” and flips over Jack high. That’s right! This fool
bet $200 with Jack high! What’s even more ridiculous is that I called
with Ace high!
The table was silent. The dealer even got into the hand and just
sat there for a moment. As I said before, I don’t remember the board
but I remember someone saying, “All he needed was a 5 to win.” Everyone
at the table took turns questioning me on my call. Every question was
answered the same. “I knew he didn’t have anything.”
I don’t know what I had at the beginning of that hand, but
afterwards I had about $1,100. I had one chip rack full of $5 for $500
and I knew I had over $1,000 total. So I excused myself from the table
to go get another chip rack from the cashier. When I return, there are
two cards sitting partial embedded in my splashed pot remaining from
the previous hand. Instead of pulling them out or moving chips off to
take a peak, I just throw $5 into the pot. There are 4 players. The
flop comes, 9 Q 3 rainbow. I check blind (I’m still racking my chips).
The dealer chip sits in front of a young well-dressed oriental
gentleman. I just so happen to be not too fond of him, either. Looking
back, I don’t know why. He was a real poker player’s dream. He had
bought-in for the maximum $300 three different times in about as many
hours. He was in for $900 and had around $500 in chips. Not the best
poker player. He comes out with $100.
I realize I need to look at my cards. I got AA! The guy next to him
calls and is all-in with $75. One more fold, and then before I can even
stop myself I call out with authority. “I’m All-in!!”
Some men say that God gave us two heads to think with, but only
enough blood to supply one at a time. This is a defense for screwing
around behind your wife’s back. It is a genius observation, though.
However, in the case of poker we have been blessed with two sides of
the brain. The analytical side which calculates the odds of our hands,
all the possible hands our rival can have, and how much to bet
strategically. Then there is the instinctual side which tells us
whether or not someone is bluffing, notices certain habits of our
rivals, and whether or not we should even go play poker on a given
night. A truly great poker player has a very good balance of both. Luck
is the great mediator. No matter what your analytical or instinctual
IQ, luck will decide your ultimate fate. The greatest statement of
poker is “you get in with the best of it and the rest is just poker.” I
say, “you use both sides of your brain to get in with the best of it
and the rest is just mediation.”
My instinctual side went all-in because, unfortunately, my
analytical side was busy counting chips from the previous hand and
stacking them in racks. I had him covered. I convinced myself that he
didn’t have Qs, or any pocket pair for that matter. He hesitated for
quite a while. He looked at me and said, “You must have Queens!” He
waited a little longer and then said, “Do you have Queens?” I finally
looked him in the face and said, “You’re going to have to pay to find
out!” He furrowed his eyebrows at me and got really pissed. If I would
have said anything else, or better yet nothing at all, he would have
folded. “Call!”
I would have to say, if you are up $900 on an initial $200 buy-in,
don’t go pissing off the richest guy at the table. He flips over 9 3
off suit. I’m behind, but still in it. The turn is a Queen. The board
pairs up, and I have a comfortable lead. My analytical side, having
been absent for the most important part of the hand, realizes that I
would have over $1,700 if I win. He has 9s & 3s, I’ve got As &
Qs. One card left.
I’m not even going to bother telling you what the river card was.
However, I will tell you that he had exactly $445 after his $100 bet.
Everyone knows what I did wrong. So, I’m not going to attempt to
explain where the hand went wrong.
The most interesting part of this entire story is the difference in
the two back-to-back hands. In the first hand, I called a $200 bet with
Ace high. I was playing the man. I read him like a book. The second
hand cost me because I was playing the odds. What are the odds that a
bad poker player flops two pair on a hand that bad? When people decide
to slow play Aces, they dream of a flop like 9 Q 3 rainbow. My
instincts and smart mouth caused my dream flop to turn into a
nightmare! A nightmare on a rollercoaster!
