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2011-08-28 - 9:39 a.m. Cute sight of the weekend: Female/immature Ruby-Throated Hummingbird drinks from near feeder, the purple Salvia flowers, and then the trumpet honeycreeper. It's a hummingbird buffet. There was still a large jackpot on offer at the IP in Biloxi, so IMOM and I decided to invest a couple of days chasing the prize on the uncapped 1/2 NL game there. Alas, no jackpot or even a small prize from the drawing barrel, but we took away a modest team win for our efforts. I mostly ran cold as ice, trying to enter pots for $2 when I might have a jackpot hand but mostly getting nothing much at all. Pretty early in the game on Saturday, I executed a turn semi-bluff raise, when I turned a pair plus a flush draw, the aggro guy immediately to my left bets, call, call, I raise to take down the pot. Despite aggro guy's dark mutter, "good time for a steal," I must have had a pretty rocky, nitty image, simply because I was involved in so few pots after the flop. The hand that really gave me the entire weekend's profit is possibly the most interesting hand I played, although it didn't involve any deep strategy. Call it a humor hand. Hand of the Day: Mission Creep, or How Button Steals Get Entirely Out of Hand Earlier, I'd picked up pocket aces UTG in a straddled pot and gone for the limp re-raise, thanks again to aggro on my left. I limp for $5, he raises to $20, call, button raises to $50, blinds fold, straddle pushes all in for a total of $120 or so. I now re-raise all-in for my entire $200 stack. The other guys fold, and we're heads-up. I flop a set, which improves to Aces full of fours, and now I have a good-sized working stack. So, at the time of the humor hand, I hold $390. The guy on my left has changed to a beer hustler young white redneck with about a $200 stack, the next guy (my big blind when I'm on the button) is a young tight/nitty/rocky black guy, and the third man involved in the pot is just a random bad 30something fish who chases draws without regard to pot odds or any other consideration except, "Hey, it really pisses off pocket Aces when I get my flush." Nitty and Random both have me covered. In this particular pot, Random fish limps in, folds to me on the button, and I pick up Q ♦ 2 ♦. For most of the time since I've been at the table, stealing has been the impossible dream, because they'll call. If you've got garbage, you might as well fold it, because you ain't bluffing these boys out of a pot. The jackpot is part of the reason -- suited connectors and pocket pairs will pay to see every flop just in case. However, since the current blinds can fold, and Random has been playing total garbage that I'm actually ahead of like 9 ♠ 3 ♠, and it just seems bad to keep folding even on my button over and over again, I make it $10 to go. Redneck is shocked that I squeaked up but he finally calls after some rambling commentary on my normally tight play. When he calls, now he prices in Nitty and Random. All call. Pot is $40, 4 players. Flop: K ♦ 7 ♦ 3 ♣ I have flopped a draw to the second nuts. Redneck checks, Nitty checks, Random bets $10. I'm not drawing to the stone cold nuts, and it wouldn't be a bad result to take the pot now, so I raise to $30. Redneck folds, but Nitty and Random call. $130. Turn: A ♦ I have turned the nuts. Nitty checks, Random checks, and I think about the action. IMOM later tells me that I hesitated for a moment as I ran through my options to get more money in the pot. Knowing that Random plays any two suited cards, I hope that he was chasing diamonds and that he has now hit an expensive second-best hand. Time to start building a pot. I often make two-thirds or pot-sized bets, but I make a slightly smaller but still decent $75 bet to get the bidding started. To my surprise, Nitty makes a min-raise to $150. Here is a bet without any purpose except to stimulate the other player to push. If I hold a set, he gives me favorable pot odds to chase the boat. Random thinks what I think -- Nitty is looking to get all-in -- and he folds. I do what I'm supposed to do. I push. Now, here's the true surprise. Nitty thinks and puzzles and wiggles and squirms and considers. He ponders, wiggles, and worries for over five minutes. Finally, another player calls the clock. "Clock," the dealer says. I know that anyone can call the clock but I don't want the target to think I'm the asshole here. "I didn't call the clock," I say. "Anyone can call the clock," she says, as I thought she would. "FLOOR! CLOCK!" "Who called the clock?" asks another guy. "Some guy who wasn't even in the hand, I think," I say. Again, I know perfectly well who it was, but I see no advantage to letting the target know that I'm paying that much attention. The floor has not yet wandered over in their desultory way, when the discussion finally gives Nitty the prod he needs. He shoves a stack out and says, "I call." Now, after all that dither and blither, combined with the min-raise, I figure he's holding a set, right? Dude holds 5 ♦ 4 ♦ for a small flush. What the--? Seems like an insta-call to me, once you've decided to min-check/raise the turn? But what do I know about the mysteries of 1/2? Now I no longer have to worry about the board pairing, so I didn't even take note of the river card. My hand is good, I double up, and my entire end of the table is scolding me for playing garbage like Q ♦ 2 ♦ . "You don't play a hand all day, and you play Queen Deuce?" says Redneck. "All my hands have a deuce. I couldn't just sit here folding forever," says I.
All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2002-2017 by Elaine Radford
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