You Can’t Always Win
Poker again this weekend, this time at the Bike. Ended up losing $200, but I had a good time, so it’s okay. Eh, who am I kidding, losing $200 is never okay. But at least I didn’t want to kill anyone over it.
Best hand of the night:
The guy in seat #1 had apparently been acting like an ass all night before I sat down at the table, and in true Poker Ass fashion he had been catching the cards to let him win repeatedly and get cocky and thus be an ass. In fact, there had been a big argument between him and another player just before I sat down, where he made some dumb-ass play and got lucky and won and then started lecturing the other player about why his bonehead play had been the height of genius. So he had half the table against him and was ripe for a spanking when I got there.
I was in seat #9, which put him immediately to my left, which meant he got to act after me. So if I called a blind, he was able to immediately raise me. Which he did consistently, betting $20 almost every time I got into a pot. Which would normally be fine, but I was calling $3 blinds with speculative hands and didn’t really want to get raised, especially every single friggin’ time. It was obvious that he was targeting me specifically, and it was especially annoying because he only did it when I was calling with a crap hand hoping to get lucky. Every time I had a real hand and called, he folded. Idiot radar or something.
Then, finally, I had half a hand. Or maybe not even that good, maybe a quarter of a hand. Two twos: deuces, ducks, the lowest pair you can get. But: a pair. And a pair of deuces can be a monster if you catch another one on the flop, giving you a set.
So I called and sure enough he raised me $20. So I raised him back $25. And that surprised him, because he was the Big Stack at the table and who was this new guy challenging him with a reraise? So he called me and we looked at the flop.
I hated the flop. There was no deuce. Instead, there was a King and a Jack and a 4. It was a terrible flop for me. And I was first to act, which meant he was going to get to try to push me around some more if I showed weakness and checked. So I bet out $25, hoping he’d fold. And he called.
Damn. But then I thought about how he’d been playing up ’til now. He raised $20 pre-flop on most hands like he’d done here, and then he made another big bet when he had a big card. An Ace, specifically. The fact that he had only called me, not reraised, told me he probably didn’t have an Ace. Probably.
The dealer dealt the 4th card, the Turn: An Ace. Shit. If the other guy had an Ace, he had me beat and was absolutely going to kill me. I decided to make him prove it and bet another $25. He called.
Just called. No raise. As aggressively as this guy had been playing, the fact the he hadn’t raised me made me pretty sure he didn’t have an Ace — or a King or a Jack.
The dealer dealt the last card, the river: an 8.
No pair on the board, lots of high cards, even a paired eight had my 2-2 beat. I did the only thing that made sense against this guy: I bet out $50. He didn’t even think about it, he just folded.
And, man, was he pissed when I showed him my little baby pocket pair: he had folded an 8.
The two big hands I lost later in the night that sealed my fate losing $200, those I’m not proud of — one was a bad read and the other was just me picking the wrong time to push all-in on a semi-bluff — but spanking that guy with my deuces was cool.
