Life in the Loony Bin (PLO High), Part II

This is a true story. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. And the guilty.

Full Tilt Poker. Pot Limit Omaha, short-handed. $25 buy-in. Kind of a loose table, at least from the two dozen or so hands I’d seen. Hand comes up where I’m dealt in the big blind. A crummy PLO hand, and I’m only too glad to fold it after a player in early position raises pot preflop. Ends up getting three callers. Pot $4.65.

Flop comes , natch.

Actually, scratch that “natch.” My whine is a put-on. So I folded queen-deuce. So what.

I often see people online crying about having folded crap cards only to see a flop that would have connected beautifully with one’s hand. Such self-loathing might make sense in a brick-and-mortar room, but most sites (including Full Tilt) rerun their randomizing program with every dealt card. I wrote about this here phenomenon at length a good while back in a couple of posts -- “Doing the ‘What If?’ Shuffle” and “Doing the ‘What If?’ Shuffle (the sequel).”

Not to say I didn’t run the cursor back over that dumb little frog avatar to double-check that yes, indeed, I had folded Q2xx. Knowing what I had mucked, I was somewhat curious to see how everyone else was going to play this here hand. No one could possibly be that attracted to this particular flop. Could they . . . ?

The first two players checked, then EvelKnievel bet pot ($4.65). The player in the small blind, MadCap, called the bet, as did HotDoggin, the early position player who had raised preflop. The pot had ballooned to $18.60.

Meanwhile, Shamus is wondering . . . how in the hell could three different players be interested in that board? There’s only one more deuce left out there. And two queens. Something smells funny here. Or fishy.

The turn brings the , making the board . MadCap and HotDoggin both quickly check, and EvelKnievel again bets pot ($18.60). There we go (thinks Shamus). We have our winner.

Hang on. MadCap calls. And HotDoggin raises 2x to $37.20. Wha? EvelKnievel, who only has $0.65 left behind, puts his last chips into the middle. MadCap takes some extra time, then calls the extra $18.60. The pot is friggin’ enormous -- $112.25.

River brings the , a card that can’t possibly turn the tide. But then again, I thought this would be a quiet hand. MadCap again takes extra time, then checks. HotDoggin quickly puts in his last $22.45. And the MadCap . . . folds.

Okay, you wiseacres . . . show us whatcha got . . .

Hotdoggin has for queens full. That’s right . . . there were only three cards out there that could possibly have made that flop good for someone, and one guy had all three.

What did EvelKnievel have? Aces? Hearts, maybe? Heck no. He mucked .

Hey, at least Evel did improve on the turn.