It’s a Sunday afternoon somewhere in the urban haze of the northwest Las Vegas Valley. There is NFL playoff football on the big screens, and the cards are in the air in a cozy poker room. The day does not start particularly well. Playing a little 4-8 limit before a no-limit seat opens up, I pick up pocket queens twice. The first time, they lose to an ace on the river. The second time, they lose to a flush on the river.
Regardless, we are called to a new no-limit game and reload for two full bullets. Not seeing anything interesting develop for the first few laps, but we do pick up 6-5 offsuit in one hand. The flop is J-8-7 of mixed suits, we have an open-ended straight draw and fire a small bet into a small pot. The player to our right calls. He’s a familiar face, wears a fu manchu mustache and chomps on a decent cigar during games. He calls. We’re looking for a 9 or a 4 to complete the straight, but the dealer puts out a queen. He checks, and I fire again. One more time, a 9 or a 4 please. The river, in fact, is another queen. Mr. Fu Manchu checks and it seems as if he’s lost interest in the hand with the running queens on board. We fire out an almost pot-sized bet, and he insta-folds. I’m briefly tempted to show the bluff, but why advertise at this point?
Several laps later, our hero picks up a dream hand: two red aces. We raise and it folds all the way back to a player wearing a scraggly red beard and a motley T-shirt. He calls, and we have the dream setup, a pocket pair heads up. The flop comes out K-8-6. It’s perfect. We credit him with a king, maybe even A-K or K-Q, and we can take it all the way to the river for full value. We bet and get a surprising result in the form of a check-raise. Does he think that his A-K is good, and he’s ahead? Has he not considered he might be up against pocket aces? We consider multiple strategies, including going all-in. Instead, we call. The turn is a harmless 4. This time, Mr. Dufus leads out for the same bet. We consider multiple strategies again. It appears, at first glance, he’s got A-K or K-Q or even K-J is willing to go all the way to the river with it. We raise his bet substantially and are committed to getting all the chips in with our pocket rockets. The river is a harmless 7. This time, he checks. We make another substantial bet that gets the last of our green chips into the pot. Mr. Dufus calls. And even before we can show the best premium pair in poker, he shows us the bad news. He’s got K-8 for two pair. A weak two pair that probably shouldn’t have called a raise, but two pair nonetheless. Players at the table gasp. And in the moments that follow, we think another level. Maybe he thought we had A-K, and his bets were telling us he could beat A-K. And maybe we should have seriously considered that level of thinking and limited our losses. In other words, maybe we played the hand like a chump.
However, players are moving and we are called to the main game. We reload for two more bullets and watch the cards go by. We are going nowhere but show some discipline, waiting for a playable hand. In fact, we pick up pocket jacks and call a hefty three-bet that appears to be either pocket aces or aggressive play with a suited A-K. After we fold on a nondescript flop and the action is complete, it is pocket aces and this time, the pocket aces take Mr. Fu Manchu’s pair of kings to Value Town for a substantial pot. We can only sigh, watch and re-learn that every hand is different for the only reason that it’s played in a different way at a different time with different people and different runouts of different cards, which are merely bits of plastic with both real and implied values depending on who holds them and what others think that others might hold. As Heracultis said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man.”
Then, with the second of two NFL playoff games winding down and the Eagles picking over the remains of the Packers, we pick up Ks-Qh offsuit in late position. Several people have limped, and we toss out an $11 raise with a slightly above-average starting hand. And not surprisingly, we get six callers. One of them is Mr. Dufus, who has been called to the main game and sitting to our immediate right. He has a healthy stack topped with three green chips that look very familiar. We are hoping to see a cornucopia of kings and queens on the flop. Instead, the dealer puts out a flop of 10-9-6 with two hearts. But as the aggressor, the action is checked back to me. And we check along, happy to see a free card, rooting fervently for a jack, preferably a black jack that would complete an inside straight or gutshot. The wizened, white-hair dealer burns and turns and out of the corner of our eye, we see a miracle: the spade jack has answered our most desired request. We have turned the absolute immortal nuts although the board now shows two hearts and two spades, ripe with flush draws. We are in late position, and something unexpected happens. The player who had won a huge pot with pocket aces now leads out for a $45 bet or roughly two-thirds pot. Then Mr. Dufus slides out two green chips to call. The action is back to me and holding the best possible hand at the time, I take only a few seconds to deliberate. I peek at my hold cards one more time. Yes, I still have a king and queen, one a spade, one a heart so I’m partially blocking both flush draws. So I gather up all my chips and get them poised for one move and one move only: All-in, all the marbles, every chip I have, including a stray dollar chip.
And it’s back to the original bettor who wants a count of how much more he will owe. And he goes deep into the tank. He thinks and thinks and thinks for what is maybe two or three minutes. I presume he’s doing the math, but I can do it for him. The pot is roughly $200 before he calls and it’s another $136 to him. So he’s getting less than 2-1. Which means he needs greater than 33 percent equity, maybe 40 percent. But what does he have? And what does Mr. Dufus have? Spoiler alert: The bettor has J-J and has spiked a set of jacks. Mr. Dufus, trailing along with a marginal hand, has J-9 and is drawing stone-cold dead. There isn’t a card he can catch. But the bettor can catch one of nine remaining outs that will pair the board. So his equity is perhaps 20 percent. After thinking and thinking and thinking, he calls. Which brings along Mr. Dufus. I don’t actually know their holdings at this point, but Mr. Dufus could easily be on a flush draw. And I’m rooting very hard for a blank. Something like the diamond trey would work. But finally with the action complete, the dealer burns and turns. And … it’s the club 5. Whew.
The bettor quickly turns up his jacks. Mr. Dufus shows J-9 not that anybody cares. And as the last to show, in order, I table the nut straight for the pot of the late afternoon. I even get to welcome home my long lost and wantonly spent green chips. The table members gasp. And Mr. Dufus even concedes that he probably should not have been involved. A guy wearing a frayed eBay Motors cap recaps the action if anybody had missed it, which they hadn’t. But he fails to mention one point: What if the guy with pocket jacks had raised preflop? Holding K-Q offsuit, would I have even called? We may never know.
So the afternoon is fading. Outside, twilight is creeping in. I’m slightly ahead for the game, but haven’t factored in the losses from the limit game. And I wander off the sportsbook to make a bet on the third and final NFL playoff game of the day. When I return, the lineup has shifted. Mr. Dufus is down to a bullet and a half, and I’m wondering if I can get it all from him. Several laps go by. I’m about ready to pack it in, go home and watch football when I peek down at a very interesting starting hand: Ad-As. Yes, the aces have come back full circle. I toss out the obligatory raise and only a masked, bald-head guy to my left calls. I have watched this guy play for hours, and he’s tighter than Ebenezer Scrooge at Christmastime.
In fact, I know what he has: A medium pocket pair, maybe 8s or 9s. He busted Mr. Fu Manchu earlier with pocket 8s when he flopped a set and turned quads. So we go off to the flop. And as I peek up to catch the community cards, I witness a statistical miracle first-hand. The flop is A-A-6. I carefully check and the guy to me left bets (!). The turn is an 8. I check, and he bets again (!). The river is a heart king that puts a flush on board, and I hope against hope, he has something. I make a smallish bet, and after some consideration, he folds. The dealer is about to gather up the board cards for the automatic shuffler, but I smile and ask him to pause. Why? Because if you flop four-of-a-kind at this particular poker room and if it happens to be on a Saturday, Sunday or a Tuesday, there is a bonus payout of five black chips. And we are more than happy to show our hand, sign the form (not a W-2G) and collect the bonus.
So from goat to hero to random good fortune, we get to experience the lows and highs of a game called Texas Hold’em. And then it’s time to walk away, perhaps to run.
