I'd like to say I was distracted by the blonde in the white tank top with the great breasts, but she wouldn't show up three tables over until later. No, I'm fresh out of excuses. I got my money in the worst of it and, well, you know what happened.
I'd recount the betting action for you except for the fact that 1) it's all a bit of a blur and, 2) it's boring. Suffice to say, I held pocket 10s, the board read Q72, and I was about to put not one, but two other players all in. These are two players that had either raised my post-flop feeler bet or called said raise.
But maybe I should back up a moment...
Don was having the worst luck I'd seen in a long time. I sometimes get the feeling I'm like a black hole of luck... so massive that I suck in the luck from everyone else. Don was sitting on my right, rather close to the event horizon.
I got the sense he owned a bait store. Maybe it was the worn jeans and the flannel shirt... or the old-man-and-the-sea beard... or the bait-store-owner-like demeanor. Of course, it could be his hat that said "Don's Bait Store."
Don had an uncanny ability to get dealt a deuce in the big blind. It happened just about every orbit and became a running joke. If you think the naked ace is a bad hand, imagine getting naked deuce after naked deuce.
I never got the other's guy name. Maybe it's for the best. Do you really want to get the name of the guy who's soul you're going to crush?
This guy was wearing a Houston Astros jersey, suggesting serious judgement issues, but I digress (if it had been a David Carr jersey, I'd have known he lacked basic common sense). Just 10 minutes earlier, I watched a donkey felt the Astros fan with a brutal two outer on the river. It was sick.
Which brings us back to where I started. My pocket 10s. I was raised and that raise was called. I had about $900 in front of me, which was more than double what I bought in for. To put them both all-in, it would cost me another $120.
But surely I was behind, right? Surely I had the worst hand, right? There is NO WAY this was a good play. And yet, I made it. And they both called. The pot was now about $600.
The Astros fan showed KQ. Of course he did. Don didn't want to show. I was so ashamed I didn't want to show either.
"Well, I laid down Queen-Ten," the 5 seat said. Yeah... thanks a lot, pal, that's exactly what I wanted to hear. There was no sense in hiding my cards any longer. Dejected, I flipped up my hand and dropped my head.
I guessed from the collective "Ohhhhhhhh!" from the table and other players who gathered exactly what had happened. The dealer pulled the only card in the deck that could win me the hand. I wanted to feel bad... Don was hemorrhaging money and Astros fan had just lost to a two-outer.
But I didn't. It was $600. I got lucky. It's what I do.