Cinch O’Clock
What time is it when I’ve got the nuts and everybody else is just pouring their chips into the pot? “Cinch time”: check. If you play enough hands some of them are bound to go your way and make you look smart. That’s the game. No matter who you are – poker is like golf in this respect – the game will shower some exciting fortune on you if you just put in the hours.
I was bad stuck in a 2-5 no-limit hold’em game, had almost left but instead stayed on putting in my hours, when I switched seats hoping for a change of luck. Just a little strategy I learned early in my gambling career when I used to play slots and couldn’t believe the people who would stay at one machine forever when it was obviously ice cold. There’s no guarantee on such moves, in slots or in poker, but it’s part of my system. I mean, how many seats can you run bad in? Each time you move it gets exponentially more unlikely that you will run bad there too.
Sure enough, when I changed seats a big hand struck. I limped under the gun with A-Q of spades, somebody popped it and four of us called. The flop came A-Q-7. Hello darling, nice to see you.
Cinch: “Check.”
Man, is that smooth or what? Whoops, it got checked around (a potential problem).
The turn was a six, so the board was A-Q-7-6 all rainbows. I’m figuring, “Yeah, well I might have let someone trip the six, but that’s got to be a million-to-one. I think I’m still golden.” The small blind bet right out on the turn and I smoothed (called) that, hoping somebody might read it for “buyable weakness.” Oh, I didn’t mention the guy in last position was a young speedball with a big stack (about $2500). Sure enough he bit. He raised it $100. The original bettor, also a decent size stack of about 1K, called it. I smoothed it again. Awful smooth, Cinch.
I’d been smoothing this pot since jump street with the nuts. It was almost like that Sade song, “Smooth Operator.” Check. This might be a good place to publish my theory about A-Q suited. The theory says it plays about 100-to-one better than it does off-suited; off-suited is a no-brainer fold in any position at a full table and suited is a powerhouse. There, that’s it: one of my coaching tenets.
So anyway, we’re now reaching the river – which was an ace. Great googly moogly: check mark for Cinch, as they say on TV. Like zero percent for the button joker and zero percent for the small blind: 100% for Cinch. There I was with the nut full having shown nothing but weakness all along. I’ve got that speedball over there behind me and there’s no way he’s going to shut it down. “I Check,” I said, after the small blind patted the table.
The speedball bet it fast, bless his heart: $300. (I’d have called that bet with any pair, and maybe without one.) The small blind was reading him for a possible button buy all along and insta-calls. Cinch goes into the tank. Nyer, nyer, nyer (Curly laugh).
Make it look good, Cinch, you devil you. Eventually I say, “I’m all-in,” quiet-like, making it sort of disorientingly unexpected, so they’re not immediately sure what I did. “What’d he say?” the small blind asks. “All-in, $720 more,” the dealer said, to clarify. The button insta-folds his steal attempt and the small blind tanks legit. At that point it looks like I might have been bluffing over-the-top of the obvious button steal and the “keep him honest” call. It was beautiful because I had made a similar move a few hands before with a marginal hand. This time, no doubt with an “unfoldable” ace (making trip aces), the small blind exasperatedly called and I won a show dog pot.
And that’s why they call me Cinch. If there is one thing I love, it’s being the nuts when you just can’t be the nuts. Check.
