Two diseased hands

Some nights the money comes in by dribs and drabs: a raise and c-bet here, a small pot there, here a bluff, there a bluff, etc. Other nights, essentially the whole session's profit comes in one or two big chunks. I don't have any real preference, as long as the "check out" amount is greater than the "buy in" amount was. But tonight was most definitely in the "big chunks" category. Moreover, both hands were, to use my new favorite poker word, highly diseased.


Diseased hand #1

When playing at the Imperial Palace, where I was parked for the evening, I often go to either a little ice cream shop between the parking garage and the casino, or pop next door to an ice cream place in the food court at O'Shea's. I've been eating ice cream while I play poker, given the opportunity, since back in the Hilton days. I've even been caught in the act on Twitpic.

And here's the crazy thing. In a weird effect so consistent that it has become close to a superstition with me (and I have very few of those), while I have the ice cream and for a short time thereafter, all sorts of good pokery things happen. I can't explain it, but it's true, and has been for four years now. Quad queens happened right after my ice cream, e.g., at the very same table as I was at tonight.

Tonight I made my usual ice cream run about an hour into my session, returning with a single scoop of Nestle Toll House Cookie ice cream. In a waffle cone--obviously (as if one really needs to specify that). I returned to my place at the table, seat 1. Usually I'll wait for the big blind, because that gives me a chance to reduce the mass of the ice cream before I have to juggle playing and eating simultaneously. But as it happened, I was just one off the button, and didn't want to wait nearly a full orbit. So I tossed in my $3, and was rewarded with Q-Q.

There was a button straddle from Seat 2. Seat 3--in a move unprecedented for him--open-raised to $25 from the small blind. (At Harrah's properties, a button straddle forces the action to start in the small blind, which I think is an awful rule, but there's not much I can do about it.) Anytime a player makes a conspicuously large opening raise, I immediately think that his most likely hand is J-J, and I prove to be right about that a large fraction of the time. But you have to be careful, because once in a while you run into somebody who plays aces that way--the regular at Mandalay Bay that I wrote about here, for instance.

Even stranger than an open-raise that large was that it was called in two spots--specifically, seats 4 and 6--before action got to me. This was already causing me to wonder what the hell was going on, because nothing even remotely like this had transpired during my time at this table. The two callers happened to be exactly the players that I had identified as the weakest and least potentially tricky ones in the field, which was helpful, because I didn't think either of them would play aces or kings that way.

I raised to $60. Seat 3 folded, though he seemed reluctant, which solidified my sense that he probably had jacks. Seat 4 moved all in, as I had expected him to do, because he had only about $25 more behind the first $25 he had committed.

I turned over my queens, at which point the man next to me kindly pointed out that Seat 6 had yet to act. Oops. This is a level of boneheaded error that I make pretty rarely, on the order of once or twice a year. The reasons it happened are obvious in retrospect. First, even though I had seen Seat 6 call the $25, and even though his money in the pot was one of the reasons I picked $60 as the reraise point, I had subsequently forgotten about him, because I was focused on whether Seat 3 was going to fold or four-bet it, the latter action likely meaning I'd have to surrender. After he had folded, I just focused on the expected action of seeing the rest of Seat 4's chips go in, and, with that happening, I felt done with the things I had been anticipating. Balancing the ice cream cone and watching for drips at the same time surely didn't help, nor did the fact that Seats 3 and 4 were in my immediate field of vision, while Seat 6 was off in the periphery.

But what's done is done and cannot be undone. (Bonus points for naming the original source for that, without Google.) I shrugged, smiled at the guy in Seat 6, and said, "I guess you get the advantage of playing the hand knowing what I have." To make matters even crazier, Seat 4 had taken the cue from me and turned over his cards, too! He was showing a suited J-9.

By the way, let's pause and reflect on Seat 4's decision-making here. He called a $25 raise--half of his stack--from an early-position, solid player, when there were still eight people left to act behind him, with J-9. Let's call that Bad Call #1. (There will be others, as you shall see.)

So Seat 6 got to make his decision seeing both opponents' hole cards, a rare luxury for him. He thought for a while, then called. Call me crazy (you probably already do, and, really, who could blame you?), but my read of his thoughts while he considered this was that he was plotting to take the pot away because of my error. That is, he thought that if he bet after the flop, I would have to conclude that I was beat, because surely he wouldn't bet a hand he knew to be losing. Maybe he was really thinking that, or maybe I was just projecting on him what I would be thinking in that spot--which is exactly that. But in either case, he ended up making the call. I thought his most likely holding was A-K. Surely he wouldn't put that much in just set-mining with a smaller pair after seeing my Q-Q, I thought, and I had already ruled out A-A and K-K when he had flat-called the initial $25. A-K seemed the only thing left in the likely range that would put in the second call of that huge initial pre-flop raise.

The flop was 3-4-5 rainbow. Not bad for queens, all things considered. Seat 6 quickly grabbed $45 in chips and pushed them across the line. I read him as scared. I was not ready to believe that he had hit that flop as hard as he wanted me to think, especially given what I had concluded about his likely narrow range based on the pre-flop action, combined with my suspicion about how he had been planning to take advantage of my gaffe.

So I shoved. He had just under $100 left now, and I had him covered. At first his face fell. I thought I had caught him in a bluff, and he was going to fold. But to my surprise, he thought for a few seconds, then called. To my even greater surprise, he then turned over A-Q offsuit.

That's right. He had first put in $25 pre-flop after an early-position raise and call. Let's call that Bad Call #2. Then he had called an additional $35 after seeing that I had him crushed, and after seeing that Seat 4 had two of the cards that might otherwise contribute to making him a miracle straight. Bad Call #3. Then he tried to steal the pot, knowing that he was ahead of Seat 4 and in a good spot to win a nice pot if he could drive me away. OK--I can't blame him for that attempt. But when I saw through it and put him to the test, he then called off another C-note, knowing that he had only seven outs (three aces and four deuces). Bad Call #4.

Turn and river were a 10 and a king, changing nothing, and I scooped it, in spite of my horrendous brain fart.

I'm telling you, it's the ice cream. It has magical powers.


Diseased hand #2

About an hour later, we had the same setup: the button and a button straddle at Seat 2, and an opening raise from Seat 3 in the small blind, this time to the more modest and standard $8. There were three calls before it got to me, so I gladly added my $8 after seeing that I had been dealt the Mother of All Hands, the Mighty Deuce-Four.

I rather enjoyed seeing the flop of 3-5-6 rainbow. Just the second nuts for me, in a situation where it seemed highly unlikely that anybody was sitting on the only hand that had me beat (the 4-7).

When it was checked around to me, I made a small $10 teaser bet. Let's see who wants to play. The button raised to $22. Given his pre-flop raise and this move, an overpair seemed the most obvious conclusion. I was stunned to see all three of the others in the hand each make the $22 call in turn. It's hard to figure how five players can all have enough of a hand at this point to want to continue.

I decided to reraise, not because I was afraid of any draws (really, only somebody with a 7-8 could be on a pure draw and have a decent chance of hurting me), but because I was convinced that one of these guys had a set and was slow-playing it, and I wanted to get his stack committed now. If the turn paired the board, I would have a horrible decision, and if it brought a 2, 4, or 7, it could scare off any chance of felting somebody who had a flopped set.

So I reraised to $100. Fold, fold in rapid succession. But then the folding stopped with Seat 6 (a different player than Seat 6 in Diseased Hand #1). He looked anguished. Bingo, I thought. There's my victim with the set, probably 3s, and he has now shifted from sly, confident slow-playing to a sick feeling that he is up against a bigger set. The call would require all of his $70 or so remaining. He pondered for nearly two minutes, then finally put the chips in. The final remaining opponent mucked.

I showed the Mighty Deuce-Four. Seat 6 grimaced, as if he had known it would be bad news. He revealed (drum roll, please) Ad-4d. He could win with two running diamonds, but otherwise was drawing to three cards just to claim half of the pot.

I think we can legitimately label this Bad Call #5.

I don't remember what the turn and river were, but they provided no miracle. How could they, really, when pitted against 2-4?

Ho-hum, flop the nuts, stack a guy, win a big pot. This is just what Deuce-Four does, despite there remaining a few hard-core unbelievers in the poker world.

When you've got ice cream, Deuce-Four, and a few pathological calling stations working together on your behalf, it's hard to lose.