The busted flush

I wish I'd done a little better at heeding my own advice tonight! Against the counsel I gave in my last post, I got cute on one hand and folded a 2 6 offsuit, reasonably (?) thinking the best I could do was a straight, which since it constituted a triple gutshot (my own coinage, as far as I know :-) was vanishingly unlikely. Of course, wouldn't you know the flop had two 6's in it, which would have given me trip 6's if I hadn't been such an "expert".

Actually, I fouled up on two of my tenets tonight. Fairly early in the session I went up about $1,300 on my $2,000 stake (that is, my stack was at $3,300), and by rights I should have ended my night right there. But playing is fun, and I kept playing. Now would be a good time to say what I should have mentioned before -- these days I exclusively play the $5/$10 (small blind/big blind) tables, which have a maximum starting stake of $2,000, and I always start with that maximum. I sometimes see people join the table with the minimum $300 stake, but that makes less than no sense to me. You don't want to constrict yourself that way; you need breathing room. I should have explained before that due to this choice of table and its associated maximum stake, the maximum I can lose in any one session is $2,000 (as long as I adhere to one of my other tenets :-). Actually, astute readers may already have inferred this, but I wanted to state it explicitly.

I'm now here to reveal tonight's killer session ender. Lest you get the mistaken impression that I have an eidetic memory, the pokerstars site has a great feature where you can grab info on the last hand played. Of course, it won't tell you anything you weren't informed of at the time (for instance, it w0n't tell you the hole cards of players who folded, or the hole cards of players who made it to the showdown but called to get there, mucked, and didn't have the "show cards" feature turned on), but it's nice not to have to rely on one's memory all the time. The killer session ender was what I'm calling "the busted flush". Those of you readers (and who am I kidding, you don't exist yet; I'll have to figure out how to drag you into existence, if only through sheer dogged persistence) who are of my vintage (50 years old at present) and are avid readers of detective fiction will immediately catch the reference; for those of you who aren't and can't, I leave it as "an exercise to the reader" to figure out what I'm referring to. You have no idea how delighted I'd be to receive comments telling me you're stumped, and begging me to enlighten you; it wouldn't be because you were stumped, but because your comments would be proof that I'm not just spouting poker nonsense into the ether!

But I digress. Here are the sorry, sordid details of tonight's session ender:

I started the hand with $1,815 in chips. Only $185 less than my starting stake! So auspicious! :-)

I was dealt a 5 and 10 of diamonds. The flop came A of diamonds, 9 of diamonds, and 3 of diamonds. I flop a freakin' flush! Life is good! I bet a whopping $10 on the strength of that (I love to slow-play).

One other player was betting heavily, and I faced that player down until I was all in. At showdown, that player turned out to have a king of diamonds and a 6 of diamonds. Another flush, and one which beats mine with a stick. Hence, the title of this post.

Here's the thing -- I actually don't feel bad about this outcome at all. You have be philosophical about such things, grasshopper! (By the way, that's a more recent pop culture reference than the post title, but you still might not get it, you callow hypothetical reader, you, who I'd pity if you actually existed!). You just have to chill and know you can't be lucky all the time. What, do you want to live forever? (yet another dated pop culture reference!)

delta: -$2,000
balance: $250,559