Dispatches from the Culture Wars

The player to my left folds and the player on the button goes into the tank for a couple minutes. Finally he calls me, no raise. At that point I figure he's probably got AK like I have, or AQ with the queen of hearts. My reasoning: If he has AA he probably reraises there to see if I've really got the flush already. If he has KK, he probably folds. So I've narrowed his hands down a bit further.

The turn is an 8 of clubs, completely meaningless on this board. I bet $200 and he again goes into the tank. He's really pondering what to do here and he's clearly trying to get some information out of me so I decide to intentionally give him some. He asked how much I had left and I told him (it was $145). I also said, "And if you want to put me all in, I'm calling."

That seemed to shake him up a bit. "Really?" he asked? "Yes. I'm not laying down this hand, period." Even under the worst case scenario, if he's holding AA -- which I don't think he is -- I've still got the redraw on him to hit the flush. And I've already got $315 in what would be a $675 pot if he decided to put me in for my last $145.

More likely he has AK, in which case a split is the worst I can do and I've got the only chance to win the pot outright, or AQ, in which case I've got him dominated about 15-1. Either way, I'm not going away (which actually means I should probably have just gone all in after the turn). After a good two minutes of thinking, he says, "Okay, I'm gonna put you all in." Call.

I had him read perfectly. He had the AQ with the queen of hearts, so he is drawing to only three cards, the three remaining queens. Of course, I wouldn't be telling this story if he didn't spike the queen on the river to take down a pot worth nearly a thousand dollars. I had him nearly as dominated as you can get in poker and he still won.

I didn't play the hand perfectly. If I had just moved all in after the turn, does he still make that move? Or does he decide that I must already have the flush or the hand that I did have and fold rather than reraising? Quite possibly. And that's what I should have done. If you're going to be pot committed anyway, why not move it in anyway? But I had the hand read perfectly and I got my money in with a 15-1 advantage. You can't really put yourself in a better situation than that.

But that, as they say, is poker. I rebought and did manage to come back to only be down about $100 for the session, which after that beat felt like a victory.

Here's another crazy hand at the same table that I wasn't involved in but got to witness. A young girl, a good solid player, is up against Billy, an older guy who probably isn't known to her but is to me (Billy is a local legend, a serious gambler who has been known to wager thousands of dollars on a golf game despite being better than a 20 handicap). And this is how the hand goes down.

The flop is 3 5 6, all diamonds. Billy is in early position and he checks the flop. She bets $25, he raises to $75 and she goes all in for another $30 or so (she didn't have a big stack, he did). He calls instantly and says, "If I lose this pot, I'm leaving the table." He turns over A 2 of diamonds for the nut flush. She groans and turns over the J 7 of diamonds.

The turn is a blank but the river is the 4 of diamonds, giving them both straight flushes - him the low end, her the high end. But here's the sad part: This hand didn't qualify for the bad beat jackpot because she only used one of her cards for the straight flush and you have to use both your cards. It also didn't qualify for a bingo win (a straight flush to the 5 pays out the person who has it $150) because he couldn't use the highest hand on the board (a 6 high straight flush, not a 5 high straight flush).

If it had qualified for the bad beat jackpot, Billy would have won about $17,000, the girl would have won about $8500 and everyone else at the table would have won about $1000. Alas, she won the pot and that was all. And true to his word, Billy got up and left the table (he wasn't angry, he just figured it was time for a break).