Trust me - I know. There were a couple circumstances that gave me some flexibility.

I once capped the betting on the river in an O8 game with the nut low. But there wasn't a low possible on board.

I can't believe that's the only idiotic thing I can think of in all the years I've been playing poker. I'm sure there's others...

(Great story, Dominic)!

My stupidity takes place in the weird games which has the side effect of getting yelled at by old nits, but that's fine by me.

In O/8 after betting all the way with my monstrous aa23 I checked behind on the river when the board read 66266 because i froze in the headlights. Not sure what they were upset about, saved the ones good enough to call a bet.

Then in stud 8, I catch an ace on 4th street to match the ace I have in the hole. The guy across the table catches an ace matching the one he has on the board. Dealer says, "action is on the aces" and I fire out a bet.

ill add another one :/

Had a last man standing bet with a guy last night in our pub game. I had lost a fair amount of chips and was the short stack on the table.
Get 1010 mid position after a UTG raise and a call...i tank fold.
show another mate next to me and he gives me the "wtf" look.
board
K 9 10
get another look
2
get another look
10
checked down on the river.
Mate proceeds to stand up and explain to the rest of the room about how much of a nit i am folding 10's pre only to Quad up on the river. didnt win the last man standing either :/

I love this one. I would have cracked up if I was at that table.

At 08 table (which I never really play) explained to my neighbor how I would have made a boat on that last hand until she pointed out the board wasn't paired.

My favorite though was playing some crap hand like T8o, board runs out with an 8 as like 3rd pair but we check all the way down. Guy next to me turns up T8 and I flip up my hand and say "chop it" to which the dealer and the rest of the table says "but you have T7 for T high and he has a pair"

i think this happens to most beginners, but when i first started to play poker i played in some live micro-stakes homegames. And i remember i turned a flush in a 3bet pot with like 300bb behind after i turn cbet and once i get bluffraised i snapjam literally in the same moment. I think I was super excited and wanted to get money in asap lol what a massive donk i was.

smth like 5 years later i also happen to get into a home game (havent played any live poker inbetween). Pretty crazy 9 handed game and i get in my 250bb postflop w fd+overs+gutter (i think i had KQs pretty irrelevant tho). It was like 6way massive 3bet pot, anyway board runs out and i make my flush. One guy turns over nut flush, i insta muck and realize after 2 seconds that i cover this guy by smth like 200 bigs and would have won a big side pot. Its obv my mistake and i dont make any fuss about it and ship my stack to the other guy who hit a lower flush. I reload and play on....so during the evening everyone goes busto except for me and some other guy. I also had a pretty sick heater so smth like 75% of the money is in front of me and 25% in front of the other guy. During my heater i also got wasted and i mean really wasted, drank like 10 0,5 litre beers and 0,5 litres of vodka and i dont really understand what is going on anymore. Anyway this other guy is sober and he wants to play me hu and i obv accept since im a drunken idiot. We agree to play 16card omaha w 25 euro ante or smth i cant remember. So my heater continues, we basically get it in every flop and i win and he reloads every time to my excact stack and obv eventually i get stacked quads vs str8 flus h or smth and go busto. that was pretty stupid considering i played low stakes online at that time and was up pretty big at one point.

lurked for a while, had to make an account to share this doozer.
final table of local £50 donkament, 7 get paid and there is 8 left. got it in on a 9 high flop with k9 vs k9 with bdfd. he got there and i lost a significant portion of my chips. The next hand i cant find a stack of 500s i had, which would've made a huge difference in relation to my stack size. I ask the guy next to me if he has any idea (lol) and eventually ask the dealer to request a camera check (I've never seen a dealer look so pissed). I was positive they had gone missing, and I was even more confident after they took over 5 minutes to camera check. But the TS walked over and said the chips never went missing, and that I had lost them in a previous hand. Extremely embarrassing, on top of the fact the next hand I shoved and stone bubbled.

Dealing at a home game, have 66, there's a raise, call, and I call. Flop is 6AK. First player bets, second layer calls, I go to raise and wait, where are my cards? I had mucked my own hand. The pot got huge by the end and AK took it down.

I can't remember the exact details, but I was on a heater as was another guy at the 2/5 table one day. We were each like 2.5-3k deep (100bb cap buy-in game). My image was maniacal.

End up flopping top set with my pocket Jacks in 3bet pot. It was basically the effective nuts on the end and after we had built up a sizable pot, he tank called a shove after a few minutes believing I was just full of air. Unfortunately, I had made a rookie mistake of having my headphones in and jamming, so I only saw him turn over TPTK on the end and assumed he folded since no way he would call off 500BBs w just that. Capped my cards for a dealer tip, slid it slightly forward--even with my river bet--and started pulling back my river AI stacks.

Dealer looked at me so confused (I pulled out my headphones) and THANK GOD said, he called your bet sir. I of course, then quickly grabbed my cards, flipped the winner and dragged biggest (in BBs) pot of my life.

Learned the valuable lesson people talk about often here with headphones w/o any damage, but scared me ****less at that moment.

Playing a $50 turbo tourney yesterday, no one speaks much English. I open AT pretty short stacked. BB calls. Flop come A83. I bet, BB x/jams and I call. BB flips his cards and I see 83o and just start laughing, shake my head, sigh, say "nice hand buddy", keep chuckling to myself and then realise he has 93. Felt like the hugest douche in the world.

I had a go-to phrase for when multiple people are doing anything poorly (including myself), which "this is the special olympics of (the thing they're doing poorly)." I'm older than a lot of you and when I was young this was acceptable/funny in most groups. This was my aha moment realizing that I was a dinosaur.

I'm at 2/5 and 2 players show down high card after missing gutshots in a heads-up pot after tons of betting. I was only paying attention to the cards and say something like "wow this is the special olympics of poker." I look up and one guy is in a wheelchair and the other has a tick. I felt like a moron and left.

ahahahaha

Just happened to me: playing 2/3. Called a $15 raise with KQ (had about $500 behind). Flop Broadway and lead out for $40 against two other players. Large stack ($900) calls and shorter stack ($200) raises to $100.

I tank shove and large stack folds. I instantly announce "I flopped it" and turn over my cards.

Oops. Shorter stack never called. I said it so fast I never even gave him a chance to think about it. Have no idea why I did this but felt pretty stupid.

Misread my hand in an all-in sidepot and thought I was shoving top 2 pair when I was actually shoving just 2nd pair. Wasn't enough to get villain away from top pair and I was out.

Bet out on the river with a low pocket pair. Villain called and announced top pair with one of the overcards. I said "you're good" and flipped my hand over, then realized that there were 4 diamonds on the board and I had made a flush on the river .... "errr, no you're not." He took it surprisingly well.

Playing 2/5 NL. I'm WAY the tightest guy at the table. I'm UTG. Just happens that I have open raised the last 3 times I'm UTG, each time with a real hand. I'm friendly with BB who complains that I have raised him off of his last 3 BBs. He offers me $2 to blind fold my hand. I agree, as it seems like good value. He pays. Just before I fold, I say "I'll fold as promised, but I HAVE to look." You already know what I'm holding...AA. I folded Aces pre, for $2.

2/5 hand. Hero not in hand. Villain 1. Total Doucebag. Every dealer/player hates this guy. Ratholes chips all the time. Villain 2. Shades/Headphones. Quiet but slowing the game down because of the headphones. Both players have 1k effective.

OTTH.

HU to the flop. Pot is only $40 or so. Flop JT8 rainbow. Villain 1. throws out a $25 chip and whispers all in. There were players in between the two and Villain 2 could not see him. Villain 2 quickly calls, thinking it was only $25.

The dealer informs him of what is going on. The floor is called and the floor gives him the option of 1. not calling and being banned from the casino or 2. calling.

Villain 2 calls and tables 84. Villain 1 is laughing his ass off and tables 9Q for the nut straight.

Turn 4 River 4 Villain 2 gets the full house runner runner style. Karma is a B......

^ good story, good karma comeuppance, horrible floorperson!

Oh look, another case of putting in one chip and while verbalizing a different amount causing a major problem!

in 2004 I was very new to poker. I played a few times with friends, you know $5 home games !! that kind of stuff. There was no games around where I lived at the time ( I'm from the province of Quebec, Canada and the nearest casino was 250 km away )

I had to travel to Kentucky for the job and I was staying close to Evansville Indiana where there's a casino on a boat on the Ohio river.

I sat down with $200 at a $5/$10 limit game without knowing what I was doing.
I never played limit again after that so I'm still not very familiar with all the rules but if I remember, bet was capped at 20$ pre-flop and flop. to $40 on the turn and unlimited on the river.

I was lucky and had about 500$ when the hand in question happened. I don't remember which card exactly were on the flop turn river but there was 4 spades on the board and I had the nut straight flush and the villain had the ace high flush and he kept raising me and I kept raising back.

I had no reason whatsoever to stop raising but stupidly after a while I did and just called before getting all of his chips.

People were like ... what were you thinking and stuff like that. My English wasn't really good at that time (I'm a french Canadian) and I couldn't really say anything meaningfull. So I was embarrassed and shy to show hands after that. So I got up and left a big winner.

On my way out, I decided to sat down at a blackjack table and luck was on my side and I ended up winning $2K.

It was the last day of my working trip to Kentucky. I left the casino early in the morning and my plane back home was scheduled in less than 4 hours. Just enough time to go back to get my things, take a shower and leave for the airport with my co-workers.

However, I didn't notice I hadn't go to the bathroom in a while. When I was playing at the tables, I guess the excitement and stress just shut down my bladder. So I'm in the car, on the bridge that crosses the Ohio river and happens to also be the state lines between Kentucky and Indiana. I had this unstoppable, sudden and violent urge to pee and yes I ended up peeing on myself in the rental car.

My co-workers were still sleeping when I arrived and I cleaned the car the best I could but the seat were still wet with piss and window cleaning liquid.

When we left for the airport, I was so tired it's one of my co-worker who drove the car. He made a comment about why the seat was wet. I kept my eyes closed and didn't say a word.

Now it's a funny story, but back then I was so embarrassed.

This is like looking at your hand when agreeing to chop the SB and BB. Why would you do that?? IT CAN ONLY BE BAD NEWS.

Yeah, I always chop, and I never look until it's my turn to act, and even post chop, I look then as well. I'm consistent in my masochism.

Occasionally I get in a staring contest with another guy for about 5 minutes because I'm used to online poker and don't realize the action is on me.

First time I played live poker in the casino (1 month after I turned 19, and in a 1/2 game) my "poker face" was an imitation of Tom Dwan's poker face with his mouth hanging open. I looked ****ing ******ed, but at the time I thought I was badass like Tom Dwan.

Ugh the cringe.