The Absolute Stone Cold Nuts?

Any half decent Hold’em player can look at a flop and determine the best possible hand. For example, if I said the flop was K-J-10, all different suits, then it would be rather easy for you to tell me that “the nuts” would be A-Q, completing the straight. This is both the right and wrong answer.

Awhile back, I was playing 1-3 NL in Tunica when I encountered a hand identical to this example. With only on opponent, I was first to act and holding A-Q with a K-J-10 rainbow flop. I checked the nuts, setting a trap. The villain was a Tunica regular, an older man whom I had played with several times before. He was a silent person who never said a word at the table and a patient player who only bet premium hands. When he put in out a small bet, my unconscious poker instincts must have felt it was slightly suspicious. I just called; the turn card brought a four and a second spade. Still holding the nuts, I checked and the silent old man bet out, bigger this time. He didn’t have much more than one big bet left in his stack, so I check-raised all in. With the speed he called, I instantly knew before he turned over his hand what I would see: a matching A-Q. However, and this is the point of this particular recollection, his hand was suited in spades, giving him a flush draw as well. So, while we both had the nuts, his hand was the absolute stone cold nuts. Fortunately, fate was kind to me on this hand and the river card was a harmless blank.

When I first started playing Hold’em, I used to laugh derisively at commentators who pointed out the potential of backdoor flush draws as even worth mentioning. Now, years later, I understand how backdoor odds must always be considered in the play of a hand. A-Q might be the best hand, but it isn’t always the absolute stone cold nuts.

Dealers Are Human Too

To those unfamiliar with poker, it may come as a surprise that professional dealers make mistakes. For the most part they are like well-oiled, flawless poker machines, but for every 50 hours or so of grinding, I seem to see a mistake. I don’t mean a simple misdeal…those occur quite often. The mistakes I’m referring to are the more egregious type: misreading the board and pushing the pot to the wrong player. However, on my last run at Tunica, I saw an error that put these simple mental lapses to shame.

I was playing $1/3 No Limit Hold’em at The Horseshoe on a very busy Saturday night. It was at the tail end of an innocuous hand for what was about a $35 pot and I was only half paying attention. An elderly gentleman to my right, who had been playing solid poker all night, tossed up his cards and inadvertently hit the river card, knocking it out of place. The dealer instinctively straightened the cards, looked at them and then pushed the small pot to the gentleman’s opponent, a younger guy who seemed to be more interested in entertaining his friends sitting behind him than playing cards. No big deal, seen it a million times. After the hand was over, the attentive kid to my left told us what we all missed, including the dealer, the elderly gentleman, and the “entertainer.”

When the dealer straightened the gentleman’s hole cards,
he accidentally swapped one for the river card!

In an instant, the gentleman’s hand went from being a Q-10 to a 10-7. With another 10 on board, he still had a pair of Tens, but the “entertainer’s” hand went from a lowly Queen high to a winning pair of Queens! With the next hand underway, the table was atwitter with shocked murmurs as the events were made public.

As bad as the dealer’s mistake was, it was the gentleman’s duty to correct it immediately. From our conversation together, I knew the gentleman had been playing cards since he was 17 and his girlfriend’s mom was stealing his winnings. I can only assume he momentarily forgot his kicker and didn’t want to make a fuss over what might be nothing. In what I estimated to be roughly 50 years of poker, he admitted he had never seen that happen before, and chances were the mistake was his.

The “entertainer,” being endowed with a courteous demeanor, offered to estimate the pot size and return it to its rightful owner. The gentleman declined, apparently eager to have the incident disappear forever into the realms of poker obscurity.

"Drunkie" and Strangeness in Tunica

On a recent trip to Tunica, I sat on a poker table that epitomized the need to pick a good game. I was in no real condition to play, having worked all morning and driven all day, but I hadn’t played in awhile and had to scratch the itch. I took a seat in a $1-3 No Limit Hold’em game at Harrah’s and built my stack for a couple hours. One by one, the little fish went broke, until I looked around at the grizzled faces of local grinders and it was my turn.

There were a couple of weird hands and bizarre rulings that occurred before I went broke. A couple of younger men sat and one announced that he was teaching his friend to play. Anything said by a stranger at the poker table should be taken with a degree of skepticism, but on the first hand the “newbie” certainly went broke like a first-timer. During the hand, however, despite being warned earlier about speaking English, the men casually refused and the “newbie” chatted in an unidentified Asian language with his partner as he played the hand. The floor manager was called, but no penalty was issued and he lost the pot, so it was quickly forgotten.

The real strangeness occurred on another hand and involved the drunkest member of our table. On the turn, he faced a smallish raise from his only opponent. Our hero, “Drunkie Red Nose,” silently pushed out his remaining chips, a stack of red $5 chips, about three times the bet.

The dealer announced him all-in and counted down the bet.
“Drunkie” didn’t say anything.
His opponent thought for a moment, called, and the dealer counted out the call.
“Drunkie” didn’t say anything.
The dealer pushed all the chips together in the middle and dealt out the river.
“Drunkie” didn’t say anything.
The hands were flipped up: a third nine and good hand for “Drunkie,” but a nine with a better kicker for his opponent.
“Drunkie” didn’t say anything.
The dealer shipped the pot and shuffled the cards.

Now, after all that, “Drunkie” suddenly says he never went all-in. Hmmm…things just got spicy. The dealer, a younger baby-faced type, says it’s really too late to do anything. Yes, by rule, a single oversized chip would just be a call, but given the events and the tall stack of chips pushed out, it was the perfect ruling. The dealer should have shut it down there, but “Drunkie” insisted and the “Floor” was summoned. Amazingly though, the young dealer did such a poor job explaining the situation, and he and the manager obviously had history of some sort, that the ruling was reversed.

After a quick guesstimation, the winner was ordered to cut the approximate surplus from his stack and return it to “Drunkie”! This was an outrageous injustice! “Drunkie” never said one single word until he found out his very good hand was beaten by another slightly better hand. His opponent was so justifiably angry with the ruling that he racked up and left. “Drunkie” actually managed to make things worse, in the manner that only truly drunk people can, by apologizing. He tried to give the money back, but his opponent refused, more angry at floor than the drunken fool earnestly pushing money at him.