Home Game - spiked

Pocket aces, under the gun. A dangerous spot in my home game, where I expect callers to my raise. I get them - three this time. This could get fun.

Jack-Ten-Four. The top two are clubs. I lead out for eight bucks into the twelve, and WM makes it sixteen. One player folds, and I'm thinking about a tight fold as well, but then the last player in the hand, after mulling it over, then nearly throwing his hand away, cold-calls the sixteen dollar bet.

I'm nowhere sure that my overpair is good, but a disembodied voice looks over at the $16 just put into the pot on an obvious draw and dares me.

"That's your money right there".

He's right. That guys's getting it bad, and at least part of every dollar he puts in belongs to me. I could have easily called the $8 into the $50-odd buck pot, waited for the draws the shake themselves out, waited to see what WC did on the turn, or I could simply go stake my claim for what had already become a large pot.

"I'm all in".

I had one extra motivation to shoving at this particular time - WC is not afraid to play aggressively, but I have often seen him shrivel up decidedly to the all-in bet. He has folded an overpair of queens on an all low board. I figured he wasn't calling without a set or jack-ten. He did think a fair amount of time, and count his chips, but in the end slid a single, tall stack to the center.

Then the cold-caller stuck his stack in the middle also.

"I must REALLY be behind" I said, in an three way all-in pot. I flipped over my cards, the first to do so, showing my bullets.

"Oh, I didn't put you on the aces at all", WC said dejectedly, and revealed jack-queen. Top pair, meh-kicker. I wonder what he DID put me on.

The cold-caller showed queen-nine for an open-ended straight draw.

Pretty much the best result I could have hoped for. I was ahead, one guy held one of the outs of the other one. I had to dodge twelve total outs, 4 kings or 4 eights make a straight for the cold-cold-cold-caller, 2 jacks or 2 queens make WC the winner.

The turn was clean, but a jack on the river wiped me out.

A $54 loss or so, played fine. Let me be a 3:2 favorite vs. two players in a big pot and I'll take it every time.

One other big hand of note - I did dribble away $15 unnecessary bucks with a set of tens on an ten-queen-king board. A jack came on the turn and the tightest player at the table fired $15 into the pot - the most obvious ace-king I had ever seen that had just caught me. I called the $15 with a fishy guy yet to act and feeling like he would have trouble getting away if the board paired. It did not pair and I easily folded to the big river bet, whereas the fishy player, with pocket queens for a higher set this time, couldn't find his virtual fold button and paid off the one card straight. Good thing the board did not pair or I would have paid off the fishy player even more.