Karma, or lack thereof

Last night I was playing at Planet Hollywood. Or, to judge by the Halloween costumes that kept going by, Planet Ho.

I was in seat 1. The wife of the guy in seat 2 came up to see him. They chatted a bit. He coaxed her to join the game, as seat 9 (of 9) was open. She agreed, and was preparing to sit down. I really have no preference between these two positions, so I asked her if she would prefer changing with me so that she could sit next to her husband. She was eager to do so, but asked, "Are you sure?" I told her it was fine. She said, "So you're not superstitious?" Me: "Not even a little bit."

I got my stuff moved over, and was prepared for the universe to reward me for going out of my way to be nice to a stranger. I looked down at my first hand and saw the two red jacks. Ah! That's good! The player to my right open-shoved for his last $20. I called. The woman to whom I had given up my seat instantly moved in her entire buy-in of $100.

It folded back around to me. I thought for a while. The obvious conclusion is that she has aces or kings. I had zero read on her level of skill or experience, obviously, so I had to wonder whether she would do this with A-K. If we expand her range from just A-A and K-K to include A-K, then my equity jumps from 19% to 40%, which at least approaches being a good call, with what is already in the pot. But after pondering it for a minute, I decided that at a minimum she would have taken a while to think about whether to shove or just call if she had A-K. So I reluctantly folded.

Sure enough, she had A-A, which had the A-8 of the short stack in horrible shape.

The flop came jack-high. The aces held two ways, but I would have stacked them both if I had stayed in.

In poker, no good deed goes unpunished.


Oh--the picture? That's a Fisker Karma. See other photos of this gorgeous machine here. And no, I don't have that kind of Karma either.