The Most Powerful Hand in Poker

Before getting back with more details from the night of blogger's poker, which I teased about here, I need to tell you about the big hand from last night's session. The hand involved the the most powerful hand in poker, which is of course definitely not Pocket Aces and most, most defnitely not Pocket Kings.  No, no, no. You see, after playing several hours the night before with Poker Grump, the hand naturally had to revolve around the "Mighty Deuce Four."

I had been having an up and down night, and I believe by this point I was a bit down from my $200 buy in.  I was in the Big Blind and a player in early position made it $10.  Two players called, including the Small Blind to my right.  I looked down at two-four offsuit and decided to just call with such a great starting hand--to slow play it.  I had just witnessed the awesomeness of this hand the previous night, demonstrated by the master of it, Grump himself.  He's already described that event here.  Of course, the victim of Grump's mastery of this killer hand, Prudence, was at the table with me, but this time she was, luckily for her, a mere spectator to what was about to unfold.

The flop was 2-2-10, rainbow. The Small Blind checked, and I bet out $20, about half the pot. It folded back to the Small Blind, who check-raised it to $50.  Clearly he had expected the original raiser to bet, but I had beat him to it, so he check-raised me instead.

I thought about re-raising but decided I could get more money by just calling for now.  Prudence had already told me the story about this guy from before I had arrived at the table.  He had totally "Hollywooded" a flopped straight and gotten a couple of people to bet for him and then call his river shove when he had the stone cold nuts.  I thought I could use his high opinion of his own poker skills to my advantage.

I called his $50 bet on the turn, whatever it was.  When he bet another $50 on the river (another innocuous looking card), I was pretty sure I had the best hand.  I think there might have been a Jack on the board by then, but nothing very threatening.  I couldn't see this particular guy playing pocket 10's like this.  I thought about it awhile, tried to Hollywood this guy as best I could, then said, "All in."

He snapped called (he had me covered by quite a bit) and said, "I have a 10."

Silently, I turned over my deuce-four and watched as the dealer pushed me the pot. I had now around $400 in chips in front of me, and I was able to build from there.  I of course pointed out my hand to Prudence, who was watching with great interest.

"The most powerful hand in poker," I said to her.  She shook her head in disbelief.  "I know, I know.  You're crazy." (or words to that effect).  Poor dear, she still fails to see the power of this mighty hand.  She is sure that "falling in love" with that hand will cost you over time.  I guess she will just have to see it action many more times before she is convinced.  Oh well.

Meanwhile, I realized that my glee in showing Prudence the hand might have been seen as rubbing it in to the guy who lost a good chunk of his stack to me.  So rather than insincerely saying "I'm sorry," I just said to him, "Tough hand."

"Yeah," he said.  "It's hard to put you on that hand."

And that my friends, is the power of the mighty deuce four!

Thanks, Grump!

For more tales from this particular night of poker, albeit with a very different tone and focus, check out this post here.

EDITED TO ADD:  The Deuce-Four maven himself, Poker Grump, has added a link to my post on his excellent blog, link below.  Thanks again for the lesson, Grump!

http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2012/05/convert.html