Forever a Fish

There were a couple hands recently played that get added to my list of favorite poker hands ever, and I thought some people here would enjoy them. I am fortunate enough to have a peer group of pro poker players who never take themselves seriously, and sometimes some ridiculous situations spawn out of that. Both of these hands were played at perhaps the worst run casino I've ever been at (although with fairly good action), and both involve the same friend. He is on the maniac side, overly loose and aggressive, although people are scared of him and think he is dangerous. Game is $5/10 $2500 max.

Hand 1
Lojack opens to $35, my friend flats on the button, big-blind flats [hole-cards to come at end].

Flop Initial raiser bets $70, friend calls, big blind folds.
Turn Initial raiser checks, the dealer prematurely deals out the jack of clubs. My friend asks "so if I check the card stays there right", the dealer nods her head, and he snap checks.
River Preflop raiser bets $120, my friend raises to $450, guy folds, and pushes his cards towards the muck. Floor is walking nearby, and the guy and one of his friends now choose to grab the floor and ask about the spot. The floor then rules that premature river should never have been there and can't play, so he has the dealer push back the guy his 2 cards, shuffle the back into the deck, and go back to my friend's action on the:

Turn #2 my friend then decides to bet instead (around $110 I think), villain calls.
River #2 river goes check-check, preflop raiser flips over AJ while my friend flips over AhTc, and AJ wins.


Hand 2
Different day, different dealer.

Big blind kicks off the hand by looking at his hand and mucking it, thinking he was UTG not realizing that the person to his right was waiting for the button to pass to post. Dealer says he needs to post his $10, guy says it's bullshit he didn't know, he doesn't want to post the $10. In the meantime, first 2 positions fold, and it gets to my friend in middle position who peels the T6o. Friend tells the guy who mucked the big-blind "here man, don't worry, you can play my hand" and ships him his 2 cards. This is even more funny to me because the probability of my friend shipping him a hand that is REMOTELY playable (like even T8o) is 0. Cutoff raises to $30, button calls, and dealer does absolutely nothing as the big blind decides to defend with his newly acquired T6o.

Flop Initial raiser c-bets, big-blind calls.
Turn Initial raiser c-bets again, and big-blind folds.

I guess the big blind calling and hitting his gutter would have simply been too epic and the poker gods would have been angered, so it wasn't to be.

Hope these were enjoyable. I just love the occasional ridiculousness that happens in live games sometimes.
Cheers LP
~Nathan

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Hey guys, I am trying to get a hold of a friend. Somewhat concerned something happened to him, probably it is nothing and I'm just being paranoid. His handle on pokerstars is Fakeorreal, he usually plays PLO on Pokerstars a few times a week at night (by Eastern Standard Time), usually on $2/$5 tables but could be anywhere in the range of $1/2- $10/$20. I was just curious if anybody has seen him playing online since May 19th. If you see him, please just shoot me a quick PM. I appreciate your help in advance.
~Nathan

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Hey guys,
I got pretty upset last night by a situation at a casino, which doesn't happen very often (once every year or 2 maybe). This one I've gotten more upset with time passing and not less, so I thought I'd make a post about it to get it off my chest or perhaps get feedback from you guys saying that it's not as ridiculous as I think.

Some brief background, as I kind of feel this went into me being taken advantage of. I have an extremely strong reputation at the casino for being honest, extremely generous, teaching people things or sharing poker ideas, and very cool when bad things happen to me or I run bad. I probably take this to an absurd extent. A few examples from most normal to most extreme:

Going busto through series of absolutely absurd suckouts, will still always just tap table and say nice hand.

Never really call floor on anyone for anything; if they did something but meant to do something else, I usually let them take it back and do what they intended.

When people have said that I had more in my stack than they thought I did (for instance if they claim a black or a couple of black chips were not in clear view), after winning I just say "alrighty, I guess the $200 doesn't play then if you couldn't see it clearly".

I often let people retrieve their hands out of the muck if I am fairly certain which two cards of the muck are theirs; a couple of times someone has mucked and said 'oh fuck no I had a straight' and let them take it back for a win or for a chop.

There are cases where when someone asks about my hand when we are heads up (during the hand), I give them full range info and how to think about the hand. ie. I bet $900 into $500, they are like "what do you have", and I'm like "well I have these hands in my range I would have 3-bet preflop so I probably don't have those, most 2-pair I'm check-raising on the flop, this bet-sizing almost certainly polarizes my range so you are probably either against the nut-flush here, or I had 1-pair with the nutflush blocker that had showdown value until you bet the river, in which case I decided to turn it into a bluff. So I guess the important thing for you to think about is do I show up with hands that have a pair and a nut-flush blocker too much, in which case I'm bluffing too much in this spot and you should call, or do I just have the nuts too much here, in which case you should just fold". I've always liked to teach/help people out, although I know in the poker community specifically that's frowned upon. Sorry

There has been one case where in a weird multi-way running it multiple times in PLO, there was a sidepot between me and this other guy (who had the nut straight at this point), and he lost to me in the first runout to a higher straight, and to a fullhouse to the 3rd guy in the hand in the 2nd runout. He started getting upset about the running it more than once or something, and he said "I had the nut-straight" and some expletive, a then mucks his hand. Dealer collects it in a way that is irretrievable, cards woven into the rest of the muck. One of the players told him that he was entitled to half of the sidepot with the lower straight (which was about $450, it was a large pot, like $4000). I have played with this person a handful of times and felt he was pretty trustworthy, so I told him he could just take half of the side, even though nobody at the table actually saw his cards. Please note: even for me this is an extreme case, I would only do this very rarely.



So here is the hand (I am messing up some preflop action but it doesn't matter). I have in the big (with clubs) in 5/5/10 PLO with $1500, someone limps in, opens to $40, villain calls, I call, limper 3-bet, fold, call call. Flop is , pot is $455 or something. Villian checks, I check, limp-raiser checks. turn , villain pots it, I call (with intention of calling any boating cards, and evaluating on ace-high flush cards), other person folds. River , villain goes allin for my 950, I instacall, and he says "did you hit the 9 on the river", I said "yes I did". He stands up, says "Mother-Fucker", and hurls his cards face-down in my direction. The person next to me was hit by one card, I was hit by one or 2; at least one of the cards ended up staying on the felt, I think 1 ended up face up on the bumper, and 2 flew off onto the floor. People are kind of looking around awkwardly, I kind of wait around for a few seconds as a floor is nearby (that I thought had seen most of what had been going on) and starts walking up to the table. Purely out of courtesy (especially since this person was upset, which I don't like), I open up my hand to show that I indeed hit the 9 on the river for a full-house. Guy says "Oh wait, I was asking you if you had nines full, I can beat that. I have 6s full", frantically gets up from his chair to walk around the table retrieving the cards from the ground (floor is standing right here at the table now btw), says "I promise I had this 66 in my hand". I was like "uhh you threw your cards at me off the table man", but the floor right there rules that he will NOT kill the winning hand after guy finds the sixes on the floor despite just hurling it off the table, and his sixes full play over my fours full for the $3,200.

After the pot was pushed to the guy I told him in the most straight-faced calm dead-pan that he should be careful doing that, because at most casinos if you fling your hand at players off of the table, it's usually considered a muck.

Anyway I feel pretty taken advantage of here; I feel that the floor did that because they know I would not ever make a big fuss about it and take it well, where this person already was causing a huge ruckus just because he thought he lost a fucking hand. Either way, I think my days of being overly kind to everyone I play against might be over.

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