Things aren't always what they appear--but sometimes they are

At Bill's Gamblin' Hall and Saloon last night, I had positioned myself with the table's weakest player on my immediate right. He was stuck, and trying to play every hand in an effort to catch lucky and get back to even. He was also drinking heavily. This is USDA-certified Prime picking-on material.

In the hand of interest, he limped in. I had Q-Q and raised. He was the only caller. The flop was Ad-8d-2c. Well, not the greatest flop I could have asked for, but when he checked to me I bet at it, hoping he'd credit me with having an ace. He called. Hmmm. Flush draw seemed the obvious possibility, maybe a weak ace, maybe second pair hoping to catch trips or two pairs. The yellow flag was waving, but not the red flag just yet.

Turn card was the queen of diamonds. I loved making my set here, but I was not thrilled with the third diamond on board. My opponent checked again. I wasn't sure what to make of this. I had him pegged as extremely straightforward, so I would expect him to bet a flush if he made it. On the other hand, maybe he was going for a check-raise, or maybe he had only a small flush and was afraid I had just made a bigger one. I couldn't tell.

Well, in poker the way you get information about an opponent's hand is by betting and seeing what he does. So that's what I did. In response, he grabbed enough chips for a substantial raise, but then just held them for a while, thinking what to do. Finally, he said, "I don't like those three diamonds out there." He then dropped most of the chips that had been in his hand, and put out only enough for the call.

Hey, pal--you think I was born yesterday? You think I can't see right through a speech? No sensible player who was actually afraid of the possible flush would give that information away by saying so out loud. Ergo, he has the flush and is trying to lead me astray so that he can squeeze more out of me. Oldest trick in the book.

Obviously I hoped to pair the board and thus make a full house, then have him bet his flush hard. No such luck. The river card is the 9c. This changed nothing about the situation. For the first time, he now became the aggressor and bet out, but it's small--only about 1/4 of the pot. Well, for that price I was willing to make the crying call, in the remote hope that he had two pair or something else I could beat, but fully expecting to see him flip up two diamonds.

I was astonished to see him instead show me two black 8s. He had flopped a set, and slow-played himself to a loss. I can only guess that he credited me with one diamond, so when no fourth one came on the river, he thought his three 8s were good.

Speeches during a poker hand almost always spell trouble. "Beware the speech," the saying goes. Remember a couple of years ago at the WSOP when Jennifer Harman made a full house, and was beaten by Cory Zeidman's straight flush? Before he raised her on the river with an unbeatable hand, he said, "I guess I can do a lot of sightseeing if I lose this hand." Classic example of a speech. (See the incredible hand play out here; see the players' after-the-fact reflections on it here. Actually, Zeidman believed he was raising--hence the speech to draw Harman in--when he didn't understand that she had bet enough that his all-in move was just a call.)

This was a new one on me: A speech that actually meant what it said, from a player so bad that he truthfully announced that he couldn't beat a flush.

Or maybe, just maybe, it was an amazingly brilliant double-reverse psych-out, plotted carefully to convince me that he did have a flush and then win the pot with a bluff on the end. After all, it contributed to my unwillingness to raise him on the river, so he lost less than he otherwise might have. And if he had moved all in there, instead of making the small bet, I would have had quite a pickle on my hands. I really don't know what I would have done.

Nah, I don't think the brilliant reverse is what was going on. I'm about 99% confident that he was too drunk and too stupid for such third-level trickery. But the possibility of pulling such a move had never occurred to me before, and it might be a good one to add to the arsenal for deployment in just the right situation some time in the future.


Incidentally, this was one of two hands in last night's session in which I made a bigger set on the turn to beat an opponent's flopped set, which is a pretty darn rare occurrence. In the other one, I had 10-10, raised, and got one caller, a pretty good player at the other end of the table. The flop was J-7-3. I bet, hoping he didn't have a jack. He raised. I thought it was most likely that he had a mediocre jack (J-Q, for example), and was a savvy enough player that he could lay it down if shown sufficient strength. I hadn't been bluffing at all, and had shown down only good hands. So I reraised him all in, thinking that he would credit me with A-J or an overpair that had him beat. He insta-called, and turned over 7-7 for the set. Oops. But then a third 10 hit the turn, and I sheepishly showed that I had caught one of my two outs for the win. As you can see, poker is all skill....