A Twist to Aces vs. Kings

After the post here, I had two more sessions at the Bike, attempting to use the same strategy. I won a little during the first one and lost a little during the second one.  The poker was unexceptional and not worth blogging about. 

The trouble was, I was incredibly card dead.  In fact, during the four sessions, totaling almost 18 hours of play, I was never once dealt pocket Aces, pocket Kings or pocket Jacks.  Not a single time. I had pocket Queens twice during that time—in the same session.  I’m sure that law of averages would dictate that I get a premium pair a lot more than twice in 18 hours of poker.

And in trying to follow the Ed Miller strategy I was learning, I had a fairly tight range of starting hands, so I just didn’t play a lot of hands.  Now that I think of it, however, his strategy was centered around play in early and middle position, I probably could have opened up the range a bit in late position, and I didn’t do that.  So next time I will remember that I can play more hands on the button.

Anyway, during one of the sessions I did learn about a hand that I think is worth mentioning, even tho I didn’t see it.

When I got to the table, at around Noon, there was a kid there with probably more chips than I’d ever seen anyone ever have at a low-stakes ($2/$3) game.  It looked like close to $2,000, give-or-take.  He was a young guy who I didn’t recognize wearing a baseball cap (the proper way), no headphones, earbuds, sunglasses or hoodie.  I observed his play right away, and he was not at all aggressive, he sure wasn’t taking advantage of his monster stack to bully the table. 

The max buy-in is $300, so I asked the guy to my right, who looked an awful lot like long-time blog reader CoolDave88, (see here), if he knew how the guy had gotten all those chips. He said that he had won a $1,200, three-way pot and never looked back.

Then he described the hand.  It was all-in preflop. The kid had pocket Aces.  The other two players both had the dreaded pocket Kings.  And boy, were they ever dreaded that time!  And sadly, the guy telling me the story was one of the poor saps with the cowboys.  Ouch.

A crazy variation to the ol’ Aces vs. Kings hand I’ve mentioned a few times before (see here), huh?  The two guys with the Kings were drawing nearly dead, and of course the kid with the Aces was a very happy camper.  The most amazing part of the story was that, with my luck with the dreaded hand, I wasn’t one of the guys with Kings.  The fact that I hadn’t arrived at the Bike yet might have had something to do with it.

Anyway, I was there less than half an hour when the kid racked up and took his chips with him.  It was a bit over $1,900.  I asked him how long he had been playing.  He said he arrived at the Bike at around 5AM.  Five AM?  My goodness, I can’t imagine any circumstances that would find me at the Bike playing poker at 5AM.  Maybe that’s why I don’t win $1,600 playing poker.

I couldn’t get Aces or Kings dealt to me in 18 hours of poker, but in that one hand, three guys had them!  But I’m pretty happy that I wasn’t one of the guys with the Kings there, at least.

Ouch.

Note:  This is a short post (by my standards) and I couldn't think of any appropriate pic to look for.  So I figured no one would object to this totally off-topic picture of Kate Upton.  Please let me know if I have misjudged my audience.