Tales from the Felt: Running Bad

Like a switch that's been turned off, my hot streak has ground to a dead halt and I find myself running terrible. One night I was completely crushed, and then last night I was four big bets from getting busted until the game got shorthanded and I toughened up, avoided tilting, and made a nice comeback. But still, it's been mostly ugly.

There's a few signs when things are running well, besides the obvious cash money: basically, the premium hands hold up most of the time, flopped sets on non-scare boards don't get crushed, and you get at least one or two "big blind specials" that pull in nice pots.

Well, that just hasn't been happening the past three days. In fact, and I think this is pretty impressive, I went through a stretch of seven straight big premium pairs -- aces three times, kings once, queens twice, jacks once -- where not only didn't I win any of the hands, not once did i even manage the second-best hand! Ultimately, in my shorthanded play, I did have my Kings hold up on a two-pair board (though I did blow the last hand of the night when I threw away Kings on a raised JJ33 board, only to have the guy flash his T9 at me). It was the first of these losing big hands, the one that triggered the slump, I guess, that was the most interesting to me (though when my pocket Aces lost to 5c4c on a J33 board with one club, that was certainly interesting)(sorry, I'm whining, and I try so hard not to).

Kill pot, and somebody has already called the short-stacked early-position raiser when I look down to find pocket Aces. I three-bet it, we're five-handed going to the flop, and I'm already not expecting to win the hand. There's enough in the pot to make almost any draw worth going for; hell, you could be drawing dead and almost be getting pot odds.

Still, I like the flop a whole lot: 9-6-4 with two diamonds. I have the Ace of diamonds, so even that has some promise. Original raiser bets, I raise, he re-raises, I cap, and there's still four of us who see the turn, a black 7. The OR throws in his last two nickels, I complete, and we lose nobody.

The river pairs the board, a 6. I almost can't imagine that somebody is in there with a 6 (and the flopped 6 was one of the diamonds, so something like Ad6d is out), but still, something doesn't seem right, and the pot is huge. Checked around to me, and I just turn over my Aces.

"Ha!" the woman in the small-blind cries. She's a decent-enough player, there every night, but has tilt tendencies. She jumps from her chair and throws down her K6 offsuit, screaming "You tried to get me out of that pot but you couldn't do it, could you?!" I mean, just gloating about this shitty K6 suckout as she's pushed the tiny side pot.

And at that moment the original raiser, who, like me, hasn't said a word during this performance, turns over his hand: pocket 9's. He flopped the set and rivered the boat, shutting the small blind up real quick-like.

And folks: I have never, in my entire life, been so absolutely ecstatic to finish third in a hand and lose a side pot. "Nice hand, sir," I said as I rapped the table.

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