Crackhead of the Day

Tim in Plano writes in with an Oklahoma bustout story that begs the question, should it ever be possible to lay down Kings pre-flop when the Aces push on the third raise?

Oh, and he also lets us know that Choctaw (in Durant, OK) is now running some good $5/$10 Omaha (and $1/$2 NLO?):

—–Original Message—–
From: Tim B
Sent: Saturday, November 11, 2006 2:32 AM
To: danm
Subject: a sad poker tale of woe

first, let me describe the situation:

friday night, 9:30pm. jonesing for poker, i decide to meet some friends up at choctaw in durant. make the hour-ish drive, talk to the brush, and get on the board for some $1/$2 NL action. about 10 minutes later, im seated at a full table of 9 and buy in for the max ($200). about 4 short stacks (under $100) all directly to my left, 2 middling stacks ($150-$250) directly to my right, and two deep stacks ($500-ish and $600-ish) across from me. all things considered, a pretty favorable distribution.

i take my first hand from two off the button. im planning on being pretty conservative for the first several orbits while i get a feel for the opposition. i take my first hand two off the button, have crap, muck. repeat 7 more times…

then, the train-wreck:

8th hand. im on the cutoff. UTG limps, UTG-1 (with roughly $500) makes it $12 straight. this is the third hand he has raised to $12 pre-flop, nearly half of the hands ive seen so far. folds to me. i squeeze my cards and find two red kings. woo hoo! i kick it up to $35 to go. folds around to the original raiser, who announces \”all in\”.

so now, i feel like i have to squeeze my cards again, just to be sure… yep. still two red kings.

i consider he could have two aces but wonder, would he put me all in with two aces? wouldnt he be more likely to simply call, or make a smaller raise? the pot is already heads-up, why put me all-in and give me a $200 reason to fold when a call might get me tied-on and cost me my stack?

after about 5 seconds of contemplation i decide it doesnt much matter. im only behind to 6 hands, and way ahead of everything else. i move my chips to the middle…

and like a punch to the gut, he rolls over two aces.

the board comes Q4Q44 and bang, 10 minutes after being seated, ive gone broke.

i just wanted to solicit your opinion, to re-assure myself that im not nuts for making the pre-flop call for all my chips with two kings in that situation. i ask because its the second time this EXACT thing has occurred in 6 months (the time before on my SECOND hand dealt) and naturally went broke each time. i mean, how do you ever fold two kings pre-flop? i might can see it if youve sat at the table for 3 hours and know the guy to be an absolute rock who would never make that play without two aces, but otherwise… youve pretty much got to call, right?

sigh… sometimes, i hate this game.

oh, on a brighter note, i dunno if youve heard but theyre now spreading omaha at choctaw! $5/$10 limit high, and $1/$2 NL (yes, no limit) high…

Tim, I certainly can\’t fault you for calling. I think two out of three times in that same situation, the dude is making that move with QQ, JJ, TT … or even 44 or AJs. So overall it\’s a profitable call. I think the only real issue is if you actually went \”broke\” — I mean I know you are not forced to eat ramen noodles, but this hand is the exact reason you have to go to said game with at least one more buy-in in your pocket. What if you had aces, and the other guy had two crappy cards that flopped two pair? You know you can get those chips back, but you need to make sure you can stick around long enough to take them.