Was He Good Enough to Play Deuce-4?

This is a fun hand from the other night.

I had pocket Aces in early position.  I raised to $10.  Then there was a long delay as the next player to act noticed that one of his two cards was ripped.  A player after him—a regular in the room who’ve I’ve played with a ton of times—questioned whether the entire hand should be declared dead and the hand redealt.  His argument was that one of the other players might have known about the ripped card and been able to identify it.  The dealer said no, the card was in play and would be replaced after this hand, but there was enough question (not sure if it was from the player who had the card or the player who first questioned it) that they called the floor over.  So with my $10 sitting out there, action was held up while the floor ruled.

The ruling was exactly what the dealer said, that the hand was live and to continue.  Two people called my raise, one was a fairly new player who was quite chatty and could be called a “character” and the other was a woman who was a good player who had been running incredibly hot, and was up like $600.  The new player hadn’t made any kind of impression on me as a player, but he was definitely in love with the sound of his own voice.

The flop came Jack-5-3 rainbow, a pretty good flop for my Aces.  I bet out $20 and the new guy hesitated a bit, thinking it over.  Finally he shrugged his shoulders and said, “The math works” and called.  The woman folded.

The turn was a 6 matching one of the suits already on the board.  I bet out $40 and this time the guy shoved.

He had me covered.  After my $40 bet I had about $70-$80 more, and his shove was about $20-$30 more than I had.

With his comment before he called on the flop, and this move, he was selling the story that he had a draw and the turn hit it.

Hmm.  I suppose he could have been slowplaying a set (two pair unlikely; he was in the cut-off seat) but it seemed like he wanted me to believe he had completed a straight.

Of course, the only way that 6 made him a straight was if he had played the mighty deuce-four, also known as the “Grump,” also known as “the most powerful hand in poker.”  I now had to consider whether this clown was smart enough to have known about the power of the deuce-four.  Had he really called my preflop raise with deuce-four?  Was he that good, was he that smart?

I came close to folding, thinking that I didn’t want to fall victim to this powerful hand with my puny pocket Aces.

Then I thought some more.  I starting thinking about his comment when he called me on the flop, after much hesitation, “The math works.”

He was trying to plant the thought in my head that he had a draw.   The six on the turn was perfect for his plan.

I said to him, “You played deuce-four?”

He smiled, which I didn’t know how to interpret. 

I decided it was much more likely that he was full of crap than that he had the straight.

I called.  The river was a 10 which didn’t put a third flush card out there.

As I’m writing this, I realize I then screwed up.  Since I called his shove, I should have insisted that he show his hand first, but before I knew it, I showed my Aces and he looked at them for a second and mucked his cards without showing his bluff.

Oh well, the important thing was that I called and won a nice pot.  I caught his bluff and had figured out he wasn’t good enough to play the mighty deuce-four.

When I left the table awhile later, I starting talking to Lightning in the poker room.  He had just gotten into town and it was my turn to use my comps for our dinner.  While talking to him, the player who had initially questioned whether the hand should be declared dead came over to apologize for almost screwing up my big hand.  No problem, I told him.  We briefly discussed his thought process.  It was all good.

Earlier, while Lightning and I were waiting to be seated at Wolfgang Puck’s, we saw one of those incidents that seem custom made for this here blog.

A girl in a tight red dress left the restaurant, ahead of a gaggle of girls who were apparently in Vegas for a bachelorette party (based on the fact that one of the gals was wearing a sash that said “bachelorette”).  The girl in the red dress had huge tits.  I know my readers will be shocked that I noticed this, but somehow, I did.  I don’t really recall how much cleavage was exposed, but the gal’s chest answered the question, “Why is ‘rack’ a slang term for a woman’s bosom?”  It really looked like a rack and it extended far away from her body.  I think she could have hit someone in the poker room with her breasts from right there at the restaurant entrance.

The second girl coming out of the eatery with her, a much more normally constructed woman, immediately went over to her friend and proceeded to feel up the girl in the red dress.  She grabbed the massive mammaries from underneath and gave them a nice feel. I suspect she wasn’t the only person whose ever seen the gal in the red dress who had thought of doing this to her, by the way.  The girl in the red dress laughed, and so did all the girls in this group, as they exited the restaurant.  The girl in the red dress then proceeded to grab her own tits and lift them up, just as her friend had.

I said to Lightning, “And I was there to see that.”

Lightning replied something to the effect, “Of course you were.”

I was kind of hoping that we were about to see yet another female-on-female motor-boating incident (see here), but alas, it didn’t go that far….at least in our presence.

Sigh.