The other night the board comes up AKQJT with no flush possible. Three players are still in the hand and so it’s an obvious split pot. I check, the second player to act bets, and we all call. I type in the message window “Uh oh, I think he has us beat with the joker.”
The funny part is that I had AQ the last player to act had AJ and the guy betting out with the nut straight on the board . . . pocket eights! He had called raises pre-flop (flop was AQJ), on the flop and on the turn with pocket eights!
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Hi, my name is Bill Rini and this is my poker blog. I've been blogging about poker and the poker industry since around 2003-ish. Like most people I started out playing poker as entertainment in home games whenever we wanted to sit around and smoke cigars, drink beer, and eat pizza, and needed a good excuse. I started playing online shortly after the first online card rooms opened and it wasn't long before I was playing 20, 30, or even 40 hours a week or more. One day I received a phone call about a program manager position at Tiltware which was the company that consulted to Full Tilt Poker on software development and marketing. After Tiltware I spent about 2.5 years working at Party Poker where I was the poker room manager.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
This is not such a bad bet to make. You’d be amazed at what people don’t know. They’ll look at their cards and think they have a bad kicker and fold to a bet. Seriously. I’ve made this bet before in a 3 way situation and one guy folded. That made the split two way instead of three.
This of course makes sense if the max rake has already been taken (it probably has by now) and you think you’ll loose somebody.
Keep in mind, people are dumb and don’t understand the “best 5 cards” rule. This has been discussed on 2+2 before and the general consensus is that as long as it doesn’t affect the rake, it’s not necessarily a bad bet to try.
Chris,
I would generally agree with you but this guy was most certainly the fish between the three of us in the pot. I’m not basing it on that hand or what he was holding but on watching him play for over 2 hours and give up a huge chunk of his stack. The other guy in the hand was a pretty strong player too so basically it’s the fish trying to pull a move on the more experienced players which is what made it funny.
You gotta think that he probably fell for that one at some point so now he’s using it without understanding why it worked on him. I found it more funny than anything.
Bill
Gotcha. That read changes it. I bet you’re right, he got burned by it before. Along those lines, the one time I did do this bet was against one other decent player and one guy who was bleeding chips. It was live too, which made it even more “funny”. The whole table looked at him like he was on drugs. Anybody with a clue at that table couldn’t wait to get into pots with him after that :)
I liked your comment though :) That is classic.