Be careful what you wish for

Just got home from an enjoyable and profitable session at the Excalibur.

Early on in the evening, I picked up Q-Q in first position. Bleah. It's really difficult to play this kind of hand from bad position, but I can't exactly throw it away, either. So I make a small raise, and get called by every single player at the table! Ugh. This story has just started, and it already has "bad ending" written all over it.

The flop was A-10-2. More ugh. Seven opponents--how many of them are holding an ace? Probably three, with my luck. Well, sometimes one has to be brave. I go after it with a bet about 2/3 the size of the pot, hoping against hope that anybody with an ace concludes that I have a better one and gives up. It almost works. I get rid of everybody except one caller, a young man who, it was easy to tell from the moment I had sat down, was a relative novice at poker. Well, that's it. He has me beat, and there's no point throwing any more money at it. I plan to check it down, fold if he bets.

But wait--the turn card is another queen, giving me a set! Yay! Maybe not a bad ending after all! I move all in. My lone remaining opponent calls. We both show our cards. He had flopped two pairs with his A-2. He sees what he's up against and groans. But then he figures out that there is some hope in the situation, stands up, and starts loudly calling out for the card he wants to come on the river:

"TWO! TWO! TWO!"

I barely had time to register the implications of what he was saying--and definitely didn't have time to explain to him that what he was asking the poker gods to send would be of no help to him. It obviously didn't dawn on him that queens full of deuces beats deuces full of aces every day of the week, and twice on Sundays.

Anyway, just as I'm clearing my head about his odd wish, the dealer slaps onto the table the river card: a deuce!

The young man positively exploded with exuberation. He was jumping up and down, yelling, pumping his fists. Then he realized that he was being impolite, reached across the table to shake my hand, and said, "Oh, man, I'm sorry!"

I was highly amused by the whole situation. I shook his hand and replied, with absolute sincerity and a heartfelt smile, "There's nothing to apologize for." I meant it more literally than he knew. I figured it's not my job to burst his bubble. The dealer would do that soon enough. (At least I was mostly trusting that the dealer would not make the same hand-reading error that my opponent had, and I watched him like a hawk to be sure he didn't kill the wrong hand or push the pot to the wrong seat.)

The dealer was trying to get the young man's attention, and finally he calmed down enough to listen. The dealer said, "He [pointing to me] still wins." The young man said, "No, I got a full house." The dealer then pointed out that my full house was higher.

I haven't seen elation slammed down into dejection that fast very many times in my life. He groaned, dropped his face, and walked out of the room looking like somebody had just shot his dog.

As the dealer was scooping up the cards to start the next hand, he shook his head and wryly noted, "He should have asked for an ace."