Bitter Nuts
Mood:  incredulous
Getting the Nuts at the flop can be a beautiful thing. You can rake in enough chips to fill the USS NIMITZ if you play them just right. But get a load of my latest Bad Beat.

I?m playing a $1 10-seat No-Limit Sit-and-Go at Ultimatebet.com (though lately, it?s been playing more like Ultimatebeat.com). After about an hour of battle, we?ve hittled down three nit-wits. I?m playing pretty well considering my pre-flops have been mostly raggedy. About the best I?ve been able to get is an Unsuited AQ which landed me a decent pot when a Queen hit at the turn. I was sitting in fourth with about 2000 chips, but dropped down to sixth and 1700 chips after losing with J5u and T8s out of the blinds.

Now I got the button and am dealt a Qc Jc. Blinds are at 50/100.

That?s not a bad pre-flop hand, with an EV of .536. With one limper coming in ahead of me, I go for a first-round knockout and raise to 300 chips. Both blinds call and the limper folds. So there?s 1000 chips in the pass. The Big Blind (I?ll call him ?Weird_Handle? because his name was kind of strange) is the chip leader at the time, holding about 4600 chips. I would prefer not playing someone with all that ammo, but this is a good hand.

The Flop: As Kh Ts.

I have flopped the best possible straight. It?s about a 310-to-1 flop. Okay, I can just go out and make a big bet when it comes around to me and end it there. But what would that get me, maybe a thousand chips and I?d still be sitting 3rd or 4th. I think I?m sophisticated enough to do more than win the pot ? I want to win a lot of money on this wonderful flop.

The Small Blind checks and Weird_Handle checks as well. I don?t want to give up a free; but I don?t want to drive out the action. So I make a nice, conservative bet of 200. I assess that it would simply be called if someone had an Ace or was even holding two-pair. I was a bit concerned about the two spades on the board; but I made the decision that I was going for the jugular here. The Small Blind folds and Weird_Handle calls. Now there?s 1400 chips in what is now becoming a pretty sizable pot.

The Turn: 6c.

I know that?s a rag for him. He bets 200. I could just flat call, but now my intuition is screaming that he is on a flush draw. Now my mind goes from visions of how to extract the most blood to getting a short-order kill. In other words: my miracle flop now seems in jeopardy. While I am not quite sophisticated enough yet to immediately figure out pot odds instantaneously, I knew a big bet was in order to give him poor pot odds and chase him out. I bet 700. Running the pot odds calculator, he should not call for more than 550. I made the right raise. If he calls, so much the better. I know from so many times of missing my flush draw, that he only has a 1-in-5 shot of his River flush.

To my surprise, Weird_Handle re-raises and puts me all in. There?s 3300 chips in the pot. If I take it, I would be chip leader and could play it tight until the money cutoff.

Weird_Handle shows his hole cards. Nostradamus, I am. He has a spade-suited K9.

Heads up on the River: It?s the TWO of SPADES.

Nut Flush trumps nut straight. Weird_Handle rakes in the chips and is now well over 6000 chips. My virtual chair goes black. My bust-out gets me a soul-searing beat and a sixth place bow out.

I try to salve my beat down with a session of limit poker at the .50/$1.00 table. I proceed to lose every hand I play and winnow my bankroll from $48.50 to $23.00.
Nice!

The Moral: I think I became so enrapt with the superb flop, that I should have been thinking more about countering the flush draw as early as the flop. Weird_Handle was praying for a free card. And from his standpoint, a 200-chip bet was like a free card. Honestly, he had so many damn chips, there wasn?t much I could really do, was there? Know your danger flops: If you have a set, watch out for 3 cards in a row?If you have a straight, watch out for 2 or more suited cards?If you have a flush, watch if the board pairs.

Walkin' Back to Virginny Beach: A Tragical Tale of Big Slick
Mood:  irritated
They call it Big Slick -- Ace and a King -- supposedly one of the greatest pre-flop hands in poker. Hit an Ace, you got top pair with top kicker. Flop a King and you hold a Nut Pair. My Poker Log has Big Slick Unsuited running at an EV of .589. Suited Big Slick has been an astounding .769. Next to Rockets, Suited Slick is my top play.

This brings me to the Hometown Heroes’ WSOP 2006 Satellite tournament. It's a free tournament (in casino-bereft Virginia, that's a given). For the next several weeks, they plan to play 40 or so qualifiers. The winners will all compete next year with the Grand Champion representing Hometown Heroes at the 2006 WSOP. A $10K entry with all expenses paid; can't beat that for free.

I pulled off a Silver Bullet (Cleaned and cooked dinner) with the Missus for a two hour furlough to play poker (as you will find -- she is the single entity that separates the WSOP bracelet from my arm). She gave me a "Get you ass home by 9:00 PM" deadline and off to Hometown Heroes. She wished me luck by saying, "Don't get shot."

Hometown Heroes, on Shore Drive, Va. Beach, is your typical sports bar with lots of big screen TVs, lots of cigarette smoke, passable grub, and a dude-to-chick ratio of about 14:1. I sign up for the tournament and was given a plastic bag containing $1000 in chips. There are about 5 [dining -- not poker] tables with 8 players to a table. I was kind of anxious as this was my first tournament of any kind in a brick-and-mortar setting [I have played dozens of No-Limit Hold 'em tournaments on Ultimatebet.com with marginal success to date]. The real challenge was that we would all actually be dealing when the button came around to us [I screwed up twice -- once almost dealing the cards out to the players AT THE FLOP and another time not burning a card and exposing a 2 o' Hearts in an all-in showdown. [Hell, I never dealt before.]

At 7:00 PM, we received the order to "Shuffle up and Deal." Early on, with the blinds at 10/20, I executed a nice pre-flop raise with a fairly crappy hand to grab a quick 150. "You bought this pot," a long-haired dude added. Longhair got me back, after my Pair of Kings (with low kicker) didn't feel good after he came over the top of me at the flop. Pretty soon, I was down to about 600 chips. I tried to steal the blinds with a suited 67 at the button; but Longhair called me again. At the river with no pair and just a gut-buster draw, he put me all in. I was pretty short stacked so I went in anyway feeling that I might be home well before my curfew. Miraculously, I caught a 4 to get my inside straight and my night continued.

I started to catch some cards and begin gathering in chips. Thrice, I had pocket 3s and they came through every time. One got me a monster pot when I flopped a set. I busted out another player when my crabs hit for a boat -- 3s full of 2s. I busted yet another player when my pocket Beyotches (Queens) beat his QK (I got a trey of ladies for the coup de grace).

With the Blinds up to 150/300, I was up to about 2800 in chips and we received the announcement that when the next player was knocked out, we would consolidate everyone into the final table. I was either 4th or 5th in chip total and with several short stacks, I felt pretty good about winning this thing. While I can say I made about four mistakes, none of them at the time did not cause me much damage.

Then Big Slick arrives.

I receive Ad Kd. I'm to the right of the Big Blind; but Hell, it' big slick. I raise it to $600. I feel like I'm going to get a nice easy steal. The button player (I'll call him Oregon Guy because he looked like a runner and he had some kind of Oregon T-Shirt) goes ALL-IN for 2450 chips. We were just about even in ammo.

What to do?

I would have simply folded outright if my A-K was not suited. But a suited Slick has always been a gold mine for me. I know Oregon Guy was a slider and once went all in with garbage and caught a magical flop. I figured he had a pocket pair; but not Rockets or Cowboys. I knew if I flopped an ace or king, I would win the pot. And then there was the possibility of a nut straight or even a flush. But what's the downside? If the flop is sour, I'm sitting there with an Ace High, with just 6 draws to beat his pair. I could just fold with marginal damage incurred.

"Are you calling?" a dude asks.

"I'm thinking," was my curt reply.

I looked at the watch and it said 8:58 -- 2 minutes before Missus' curfew. Pumpkin time was approaching.

"I call."

In goes another 1850 chips. There is some excitement at our table. "You got balls," one dude compliments me.

I show my Slick. Oregon Guy reveals Pocket 10s. It's a coin flip. But why do I risk 2 hours of skillful play to possibly lose it all, in an instant, on a near-random event?

The flop: 6d, 8h, 3s. About as atrocious flop you can get with The Slick. Oregon Guy is screaming "Low Cards, Low Cards, Low Cards." I say nothing because I know how this is going to end.

The Turn: 5c . There goes my runner-runner flush. I'm down to a 12.8% chance of getting one of my 6 Ace or King outs.

The River: A rag (who cares what it is).

Oregon Guy doubles up. I get hit with the Big Blind and go all in with my last 350. I get a fetid off suit 9 3 and get busted out by one of the short stacks.

No Preliminary Win. Not even a trip to the Final Table. But everyone did congratulate me on playing well and I got home just in time to hear Missus inform me that some of the ribs I grilled were on the rare side.

Post-Mortem: After brooding over my loss for sometime, I picked up my well-worn copy of Cloutier and McEvoy's "Championship Hold’em." Though a treatise on Limit Hold 'em, it was pretty clear to them, that to win tournament, you have to win with A-K and you have to beat A-K.

In Hold 'em, the decision to go all-in with Big Slick is a Poker player's Kobayashi Maru , which Trekkies recall is the Starfleet Academy's NO-WIN scenario. It was a very tough decision for me as I was still pretty healthy in chips and I was committing the sin of going into a knife-fight with someone even in chips. To exacerbate things, I'm an 11.7:10 underdog (EV = .461). I played it right by not raising all in. But in the future, I am going to be reluctant to call Big Slick for all of my chips. Honestly, the only hand worth bringing in the farm for pre-flop is Pocket Aces. Everything else is problematic.

Maybe I should have known better. After all, A-K is also referred to as “Walking back to Houston.” That goes back to the days when Doyle Brunson was a young Texan pup and would drive to Dallas for some big-stakes poker, lose a fortune on Big Slick, and wind up walking back home to H-Town. At least, I didn't have to walk back to my house in Virginia Beach. After all, who would want my piece of crap Cavalier?