I... Ummm.. Errr... Yeah, so today this hand happened:
Straddled pot. I am first to act. I just stacked the guy on my left (tilty), and he rebought before this hand. He is into the game for about $4.5k in 2 days. He is on tilt. 500 effective.
Button is a player I know well and who knows me well. I have helped him with his game past year or so. Currently in a rough patch, he switched up venues today for a change of scenery. Despite a $1.7k stack, he has been very quiet the past 2 hours.
Straddler is a relative u known. 245 effective. Rec player. Seems ABC.
I have been fairly active at the table (as usual) and I have everyone covered.
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$15 straddle. 1st to act I have QQ.
Tilty calls. Button makes it 135.
I respect this raise. I don't think it is a button move. I am fairly certain he feels I am a better deep stack player than he is, and likely wants me out of the hand (maybe he can come into thread and confirm/deny... Could just be my ego making things up).
BB shoves all in for $245.
This is a fairly critical number. At $245 the button will not be able to re-open action (but tilty can). I am OOP, deep stacked against a very good button player, with a guy on tilt still to act.
Option 1: flat, hope tilty doesn't reopen action and allow button to raise me off my hand
Option 2: raise to 550ish. This tells button if he comes in, we are playing for stacks. Either isolates the short stack and possibly tilty, or costs me $550 if button shoves. If button flats I assume I am set mining.
Option 3: fold. Let it go. I'm flipping at best and better situations will arise.
1 choose option 1, and hope tilty doesn't realize his best play is shove or fold.
I call, tilty calls (yay!), and button does not look happy that he has to call.
Flop: K
2
7
FML. My only play is to check. Somewhat surprisingly, it is checked around. I now no longer know if I want to hit my Queen or not.
Turn 6
Again I check. I wave the white flag.
My opponents both check. Interesting. Maybe I'm actually good here. I consider value betting the river.
River A
Well, there goes that plan. Time to lick my wounds and write this hand off. I check.
Check.
Check.
No side pot. We all stare at each other as if someone just brought a monkey to a cock fight, then made an inane reference about it at the poker table.
After about 4 hours of confused staring, button shows JJ. I meekly flip my QQ. Tilty stares at his hand for about 3 days, then mucks.
I motion resignedly towards the all in. Looks like his AK is good. Or A6. Or whatever the **** he has.
He stares there with his jaw dropped a bit, and slowly tables TT. I've seen that look on a man's face before. It's the look you get when you stab someone's puppy. Or, at least I imagine that's the look you get. I assume. Look, I never stabbed a puppy. But you get the idea. And I like puppies. Let's move on.
I scoop.
This is by far the best hand I ever won with QQ (not the biggest pot, but the scoop basically felt like free money.) I had already given up on the hand sometime around the 5th PF raise. And now on the seemingly worst possible board for my hand.
With the all-in player and dry side pot none of us really had bluff equity to rep anything other than what we had. The total dynamics and oddity of the hand made it a fairly unique situation.
Not the biggest pot or most exciting hand, just one of the stranger/more unique ones I have come across.
Immediately after the hand the button racked up and left.
QQ is a hand that has taken much from me in my lifetime. A hand my wife says I should "never ever ever play again fold it don't look at it just muck it and move on."
But today, the bitches prevailed.
Today, for the first time ever in my poker career, I won a pot with Queens.
Today I became a man.