Poker Beat: Flopping flushes at Black Hawk's Ameristar

A few days ago I was playing in a fairly wild 1-2-100 game at Ameristar. Players were very loose (six to eight players in hands that had been raised before the flop) and extremely aggressive. Almost any raise would be re-raised, even with rags. This makes it really tricky to put reads on other players. Anyone who watches Poker After Dark on NBC and witnessed maniac Dario Minieri beat up on poker greats Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson knows what I’m talking about.

I was trying to keep up with the pace and not lay down too many hands, since bluffing was rampant. I was pretty much playing pocket pairs, AK, AQ, AJ and suited connecters. So, I look down in middle position and I had 7C 8C. I called. The guy after me also calls. Flop comes QC 5C 2C! Awesome! The odds of flopping a flush are about 118:1 so I’m feeling pretty good, but I don’t want to slow play the hand and give a higher flush a chance to hit. After all, there are still ostensibly eight other clubs and someone holding a 9, 10, J, K or A would beat me if another club comes on the turn or river I bet out about $20 and the player after me calls. Everyone else folds.

The turn is a 9H. That doesn’t bother me. I bet out $50 and the opponent calls again. I can’t figure out what he has, but I put him on AC Q of something. The river is another medium diamond. My flush has got to be good. I bet $100 and he re-raises me another $100. Huh? I go through the possibilities. He could have the AQ and missed hitting his nut flush but still has top pair. He could have AA or a flopped set of queens, fives or deuces, but I didn’t figure that was real or he would have raised the flop since he wouldn’t put me on the flush. Could he have a flush as well? Could it be higher than mine? I doubted it and called. He turns over AC 4C. Nooooooooooooooo!

The room starts to cave in on me. I start to sweat. I want to punch something. I want my mommy. Seriously? What are the odds? I had to look them up since it’s not like anyone figures this to happen. Odds of two people flopping flushes is about .4 percent. Not 4 percent, it’s .4 percent. Once the flop came, the odds that he also had a flopped flush were 2.59 percent. Now, I’ve read advice that you should lay down a small or medium flopped flush if you get a huge bet over the top of you and I totally disagree (despite having lost this). If you factor in the way people play sets, two pair, bluffs and even smaller flopped flushes, you need to call these bets. The odds of being beaten are just way too small. I mean, think about it. If you had for some reason played 3C 4C or 3C 6C and were last to act, wouldn’t you be playing it the way my opponent was?

Just to remind me of how cruel poker can be, I flopped another flush about two hours later and lost it as well to a higher flopped flush. Here’s the salt on the wound. It was to the same player who beat me the first time. I’m not even going to try to calculate how long the odds were of that happening. After that, it was time to call it a night.

Book review

“Every Hand Revealed,” by Gus Hansen

Here’s a book that I would liked to have included in the holiday gift guide, but there just wasn’t enough room. I really liked it, so I’m tacking it on to this week’s column.

Many folks who watch poker on TV will be familiar with Danish player Gus Hansen. While most poker books discuss strategy and rules for playing, this book covers new ground. Gus won first place in the 2007 Aussie Millions tournament and kept a tape recorder nearby to record every hand he played. The book is basically a transcription of what he had, what was on the board, the outcome of the hand and his explanation of how and why he played it the way he did. It takes us from the first hand dealt through to his winning aces. Available on Amazon.com for $15.95.

Mark B. Lasser is Denver writer and international poker player. He regularly plays in Colorado, Arizona, California, Missouri and Nevada. His work has appeared in Bikini Magazine, Blue Travel and Warp. Readers can send questions and comments to him at ColoradoPokerMark@comcast.net.