Battling The Lucky

I think if you play cards long enough, there are a certain few individuals that you simply have a hard time beating at the tables. They own you. Either through luck or through skill, you can never seem to show down a winner against them.

After fully boycotting the "s" word, I took my battered immune system to Gucci Rick's last night. The game had been on a two week hiatus due to lack of players and I was not going to sit idle and let the game die. It turns out pretty much everyone there was getting over some kind of cold as each pot was contested in a cacophony of hacks and coughs. I felt like I was one of the healthiest ones there. Otis of course was feeling fit and hardy since he'd quarantined himself for the past three weeks. Smart man.

A new entry to the Gucci Game, but an old time player from the era of the Gaelic Game, showed up last night. Mean Dean the Drawing Machine. I'll never forget the pot I lost to him probably over a year ago when I rivered a set of Aces, but lost to his just-completed straight draw. He played the hand aggressively and took the action away from me and then pushed on the river. It was a large pot and I had a ton of trouble putting him on a hand for whatever reason. Some hands stick with you over a long enough period of time and that was one of them.

So it was not without trepidation that I entered any pots with him last night. Luckily for me, I had position sitting two to his left. It took three tries, but eventually I did win a hand against him, but not without any BadBlood patented statistically improbable hands.

On hand #1, I called a raise from Dean with JhTh. The flop came AcKhQh. Not bad for my hand. I had the nuts and a re-draw to the uber-nuts. Now the question is, is this hand safe to slow-play? What if I told you my opponent had K8o? I took a gamble and just smooth called the flop lead out. The turn paired the Ace and it went check-check. The King on the river prompted me to fold face up. I run goot.

On hand #2, we got it all in on the turn. I had AcQc, with a QhQd9c8c board. Dean had KsQs. The eight on the river made it a chop pot.

Then finally, my AA held up against Deans TT wherein he had half his stack in pre-flop and the rest in post-flop. I dodged a two-outer and finally won a hand against him.

Without doubt, I do feel snakebit against certain players, Dean being one of them. I'm hoping he returns to the Gucci Game - even though I have trouble winning pots against him, he's a great guy with a lot of gamble in his game. Those characteristics are always welcome at one of the few remaining home games I get to play in.