Don’t muck the winner!
Boy is my face red. Last week I played some live $4/$8 Omaha Hi-Lo and mucked the winner. In today’s world of poker, No Limit Hold’em rules. Therefore, I have notsomuch live experience with omaha. I can hold my own, but I’m no expert. Hence this fateful hand.
The game was super loose, and it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary to see it get capped preflop. This was one of those hands, and I held something like As Kh 5s 3h. With five or six people to the flop, we already had well over $100 in the pot. The flop came 4s Qs 7h. The betting started going nuts again, and it wasn’t long before it was capped on the flop. Obviously, at least one person had A2 and flopped the nut low, and another most likely had a set or at least top two.
The turn semi-bricked for me, as the 5c came. I mean, I now had a pair of fives to go along with my nut flush draw, but unfortunately, a pair of fives don’t usually win at showdown in omaha. Amazingly, I believe there was only one or two bets on the turn. The pot had now swelled up to about $300.
I missed my flush on the river, but it interestly brought the 5d. I now had trip fives with an ace kicker, but in Omaha, someone could easily have 68 for a straight, 44 or 75 for a full house, etc. So many hands beat me, but with the pot being so big, I had no choice but to call my opponent’s bet and see if my trip fives were good. I called, and he tabled his A5.
Damn, nice hand. I show my five and throw my other three cards into the muck. The tourist at the other end of the table goes nuts… that won the pot? My new friend next to me shockingly asked what my kicker was. I tell him it was an ace.
No, wait, that can’t be right. If I had the ace, I just mucked the winner. I know I had a king, so I must have had trip fives with a king kicker. I tell him that.
No, wait again. I was on the nut flush draw. That was the only reason I was still in the hand. Holy shit, I had the same hand as him. As my brain processes this, I explain outloud to myself that I had A5 and just mucked the winner. My opponent with the WINNING A5 says, “That sucks,” as he rakes his $300+ pot. Fucking whoops.
I don’t know what happened; apparantly my brain decided to shut down for a half a second. I definitely didn’t think he showed me a full house, so I don’t know how I didn’t table my hand. So bizarre.
So lesson learned… don’t muck the winner. Take the split pot.
P.S. – I’ve been telling this story saying how I’ve never mucked a winner before, and I guess there’s a first time for everything. Well, I stand corrected. I just recalled a hand I played in a $4-$8 game with Gank where
I bluffed all three streets with ace high. When I got called on the river, I said ace high and mucked my hand, obviously being beat. My opponent tables KQ, no pair, no draw. How he called on the river is a mystery. I guess he knew I would muck my ace high without showing it down. I suck.
WSOP Week (w/Pictures)
It’s been a crazy week with the World Series of Poker Main Event going on. My roommate
Aaron Bartley got really far in the tournament (137th place out of 8,773 players), and
my new friend Bryan Micon got knocked out this evening in 63rd place. Here’s some
pictures captured from some crazy nights this past week:
This is my buddy Bill, drunk and tired as hell. He had just finished day 1 of the Main
Event, and he was blowing off steam at a $3-$6 limit game. He bought in for $1000.
Both Bill and Aaron played their cards blind and just bet and raised in the game. This
is my favorite hand. My boss Kelly kept raising with pocket aces, and Bill kept raising
without looking. When the hand was over, Bill ended up having 72, and the final board
read J2572. He won like a $300 pot.
After Aaron busted out, he used some of his winnings to buy this 26″ LCD monitor for his
computer. You can’t really tell from the picture, but it’s huge. Even funnier is that
he’s talking about brining it back and getting a 30″, since that’s far more pimp.
After Micon got knocked out, we visited him at the Rio. Before playing table games,
Aaron and him settled up their debts. A room full of poker players watched.
Ahh, the elevator ride down. How little we knew back then. We had no idea what kind of
a spanking we were in for at the craps table. (Internet superstar Brett “Gank” Jungblut
makes his only veeRob picture appearance here.)
After busting out at craps, Aaron and Micon flash the scrilla (and the Harrahs Diamond
Card) to get them to open an exclusive Pai Gow table for us. We succeed, for the second
time that evening (we made them open a craps table for us).
