Here’s a hand I played in the big no-limit game at Lucky Chances. There was a guy in the game I’d never played with before. He was giving lots of action. So far I’d played two pots against him. Both times I was on the button. Both times the river went check-check. Both times I had the winner. And both times my cards caught him by surprise by being quite a bit less strong than he expected. He made it known that in his perception of the universe, I suck.
Then this hand came up. My stack was $4,000 and he had me covered. He was on the button and I had the big blind. Everyone folded to him and he opened for $160. The small blind folded and I called. The flop was J-J-2 rainbow. I checked, and he checked. The turn was an ace. I checked. He started to check, then he said “time,” and he acted like he was thinking, and then he said “two hundred.” I called instantly with two $100 chips while he fumbled around with putting ten $20 chips into the pot.
The river was a king. Final board: J-J-2, A, K. I checked. His face got consternated and he shrugged and said, “Your ace is good. I check.” I turned over pocket sixes and he said, “That’s good too.”
“Nice hand, buddy,” he said with a snark. “If you don’t mind me asking, what do you do for a living?”
Now, if he had intended this as a polite question, then I would have ignored him politely. But he didn’t. He was being mean. I’d been poked by this rib before. He was mocking me and my poker playing by implying that I must have a pretty good job to be able to afford to play as bad as I do. Well, I lost my cool. I got rough. I ignored him ruthlessly.
It all ended happily though, with a round of laughter, when one of my best poker buddies, Sam B., spoke up and replied on my behalf…
“He plays limit.”
5 Comments
It is of course a foul canard. Today’s limit player, holding 66 in the big blind, would have three-bet the raise, bet-called the flop and checkraised the turn in hopes of getting a free showdown.
(Today’s limit players are lagtards.)
“I lost my cool and ignored him.” Ha. Classic.
LOL I get that a lot when I play no limit too. I didn’t expect it here so when I read it I burst out laughing. So classic.
Absolutely classic. I’ve only lost my cool once playing NL in Vegas, it was at Ballys and I won a couple of hands and the self proclaimed (out of towner no less) expert pro “called my hand” (and of course he was completely wrong). Anyways, I like your strategy of pissing em off with silence.
Good call on the turn. It goes to show that if you trust your reads, more often than not you will profit.
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