Poker

I'm a bit of a poker player. OK, I'm a lot of a poker player. I play Texas hold 'em mostly but also 7 card stud and 7 card Hi-Lo. We have a hold 'em school at work and we play more or less every lunchtime (a good break from the desk). Now I consider my self to be a reasonable player and I have won money in tournaments, but I have days where, because this lunchtime game is for fun and a league where only honour is at stake, I have occasional runs where I play very loose indeed.

Recently, I have been playing tight and aggressive (only playing good hands and betting them heavily to win) and it's paying off as I'm having a good run, but at the same time I have struggled to make pocket pairs pay out. I should explain that a pocket pair is a pair dealt to you in your 'hole' cards (the ones only you can see and use). But today, I think I may have broken the curse.First off, the chances of getting dealt a pocket pair are 220/1 (interestingly I had at least 4 pocket pairs today in an hours play). The chances of making a set (three of a kind or 'tripps') on the flop (the first three community cards dealt, i.e. cards that all players can see and use) is under 12 percent which makes the overall chance quite small already.

Well, today I was dealt pocket 3's, not a spectacular hand but more or less as good as any pocket pair until the flop considering you don't know what anyone else has, and so I raised the bets pre-flop. I got callers. The flop came down 9-9-3. I had made a full house on the flop, a 0.98 chance from my position. The beauty was that it was such an unlikely hand to have no one saw it and I was on the button (translation: I was the dealer), so I was last to act.

The first person to act bet 100 which is an appreciable amount considering we start with 380 chips each. The next player folded after some umm-ing and ahh-ing. The next player folded immediately and the action was on me, so I milked it for all it was worth. I looked like it was a tough decision, and with a lesser hand it would be as the only sensible move at that point is to go over the top, re-raising the bet to 200 (minimum raise is the last bet) and if you have to go in for 200, you probably want to go all-in (bet all your chips), or fold. I made noises about my opponent having two pairs or tripps and eventually went all-in having made it look like I was probably a bit weak and an underdog. My opponent had no hesitation in calling me and we showed down - his A-Q of spades (basically, two overcards with Ace being the top possible kicker) to my full house. The only thing to save him would have been either two more aces, two more queens or a 9 and an ace or queen, all of which were very long odds, and indeed he didn't get it giving me a rather handsome stack of chips in winnings.

But it gets better. Of late, I have also had appalling luck with another hand: A-Q, suited or not, has punished me so many times either losing with it or to it (on one occasion I had suited big slick, i.e. A-K of the same suit and lost to an off suit A-Q) but now it seems I have made the pocket pair pay and I have beaten the suited A-Q. Hurrah!!

It's a funny old game, poker. Sometimes it can repeatedly kick you in the nuts in the nastiest ways possible but you still come back for more because you know that eventually, the poker gods will reward you with that one sweet hand that no-one sees and you get to take someone to the cleaners.


Footnote:

Gambling should be enjoyed responsibly. I don't play for money very often and only ever for a fiver or tenner at the most. It can be addictive and if you let it, it can become a real problem. If you think you might have a problem, find help at Gamblers Anonymous.