I spent the bulk of my weekend on tilt — at the hands of this guy, Neil the Professional Keno Player.
I was playing really well — having a great chatty time, too, with my fellow poker blog-geeks, and was set to put in the long hours required to go deep in the 2008 Winter Bloggerfest Tourney (a $135 deep-stack at the Venetian), until I got into a hand with the above. Such a ass donkey in the truest sense … at least that\’s how I felt when he called my all-in check-raise with third pair on a paired, straighty, and thrice-suited board. Went from being happy about seeing some random d-bagger wearing a Pokerati patch to thinking we need standards around this place, and by this place I mean the internet/earth.
My bad, of course, for walking through a war zone and kicking a shiny piece of metal really hard to see if it\’s a landmine. Click below for hand details:
UPDATE: Neil\’s \”people\” tell me he is not \”Neil Fontenot the Professional Keno Player\”, but rather \”Professional Keno Player Neil Fontenot\”, aka PKPNF. Pokerati offers our sincerest apologies for the error.
Blinds are 100/200 with a 25 ante. I have about 10,000 chips (below average but not even close to desperate with an M=19). A bunch of limpers — like four or five, I think — and I have AQs in the big blind. Hoping to draw in lots of money should I hit the flop nicely, and get out cheap if I don\’t, I check.
Flop comes 9s-7s-4d, two spades. (I have clubs.) Check-check-check-check-check … all the way to Neil, who is on the button. He bets 500. I look coy and check-min-raise (for info, really) to 1,000. Everyone else folds. He calls.
Turn is the 10d. I check. He sheepishly bets 1,000. Hmm, seems very weak from a weak player. I call. River is 10c. I check, he bets 1,000 again — ooh, confirmation of the weakness I was looking for — so I move all-in for about 7,500 more. Fontenot has about 8,000 more chips and instacalls with A-7.
OK, maybe never mind … I can see about four separate mistakes I made in this hand, even if he did make a terrible call. I later asked him why he did call — \”Did you just know I was bluffing?\”. He said no, he just knew I was a donkey and figured there was so much in the pot that he had to call. He seemed sincerely shocked when I told him how big my final bet actually was — making me think he really didn\’t see my 5,000 white chip in the mix.
UPDATE: I think some of my hand recall is off here … I might have fired out 3,000 on the turn, and he called. Yes, I think that\’s what happened … I knew I had more chips than 10k when the hand started. I think. Never mind. Fuggit — I hate this hand. Puts me on tilt, still, every which way.