One hand, two stories

Venetian last night. Player A puts in a raise to about $10 from early position. Player B reraises to $35. Player C calls from the big blind. Player A calls, too. Flop is three spades, one of which is the 9, though I don't remember the others. Player C is first to act and moves all-in for about $90. Player A calls. Player B grumbles a bit, then folds A-K with no spade. Player A turns over the nuts, A-Q of spades. Player C sees this, then throws his cards face down in the muck, and walks away from the table before the rest of the hand plays out.

The turn are river are two more 9s, meaning that if Player C had any pocket pair, or had made any pair on the flop, he would have made a backdoor full house and beaten A's flopped nut flush. Now, maybe he was genuinely drawing dead, with a hand like K-10 of spades for the second-nut flush, without even any runner-runner straight flush possibilities, so that he wasn't giving up anything by his muck-and-run. But it was pretty strange nevertheless. I wish I knew what he had had. He very well may have thrown away what would have turned into the winner.

I've told other stories about players unwisely walking away from the table in the middle of a hand. This is another example of why that's a really bad idea.


Part Two of the story is that as Player A was raking in the chips, Player B started giving him grief for the bad pre-flop call: "You had a reraise and a flat call, and you still called from bad position with A-Q. Brilliant." Player A kind of shrugged, murmured something like, "OK, maybe it was a bad call," but clearly didn't want to get into an argument over it. Player B kept it up: "You were a 7:1 dog going into the flop."

Now, hold on just a dog-gone minute there, pardner. 7:1??? No way. Suited A-Q is a 70/30 dog against A-K, plus or minus 2 percentage points depending on what suits the A-K has (and I don't remember what Player B's were). That's about 2.5:1, not 7:1. The only way one hand can be anything like a 7:1 underdog pre-flop (assuming we don't know what other cards were folded, and thus no longer in the deck) is a big pair versus two undercards that cannot work together to make a flush or straight, such as A-A or K-K versus 7-2 offsuit.

It's bad enough to spew hatred at an opponent for what you think was a bad play that turned lucky for him. But if you're going to do so, at least get your facts and numbers right. No need to look like a hotheaded, immature, sore loser and an ignoramus!