Sunday, May 01, 2005
To counter all of the bad beat stories...
MAN did I get lucky on this one!
Decided to play one $20 SnG before bed tonight, and had a $25NL table pulled up alongside. Busted out 9th in the SnG when I fell in love with my AKs turned top-pair-top-kicker, and lost to 9-7 offsuit in the big blind, who flopped two pair. I was in the small blind and my DUMB ass limped in to play cutsie. How many times have you seen me write, "NO SLOWPLAYING ALLOWED??" Yeah, I can be stubborn sometimes.
Anyway.... So I closed the SnG and figured I'd cut my losses (since I obviously wasn't in a very focused or alert frame of mind for poker). I set out to finish my last orbit in the ring game.
Hand-before-last, I'm holding KK in late position (one off the button, I believe). Four limpers in front of me. I raise to $1.10 (just over 4x the big blind). Three limpers fell out, and two called my raise (including the big blind). Flop came A-10-x rainbow. Damn ace. Of course there's an ace! First to act checked, and the big blind bet the pot, $4-ish. I raised to $8, and BB re-raised all-in (which was another $3). I figured, at this point I'm getting almost 8:1 on my money to call the additional $3, though the re-raise told me this chick had an ace, for sure. I'd still have $15 left in front of me to sulk away from the table with after my loss, and considering my pot investment, I called.
She had A-10 for two pair. Yikes! My cowboys shriveled up into pansies.
Then, the first-to-act fellow exclaimed in the chat, "Whew! I'm glad I folded my K-J!"
Awww, hell. That means there's only one king left in the deck. A 5% chance to win the pot, if that.
Well, that one king fell on the turn. My three kings held up and I took down the pot.
It was a suckout of huge proportions. Not quite as big as if I'd have sucked out a runner-runner (those ALWAYS amaze me as feats of nature), but pretty damn big.
That bit of luck allowed me to finish the night even, and get away from poker when I shouldn't have even fired it up in the first place (tired, having a bad day, etc).
Thank you, Lady Luck!
With the 4 limpers and the low-stakes, you might want to consider going up to 5x or 6x the BB. If just two people called the extra 3BB, the rest would be getting decent odds to call with any two cards. They didn't, of course, but there's always that danger.