Invisible leprechauns

I bet with a title like this one, you're thinking my streak stayed alive. Sadly, that's not the case. I'm posting this the day after the event itself, since it was too late to post last night. Of course, a correction of fortune was inevitable at some point, but it still hurt. I won some pots at the first table I joined, but had several premium hands kicked ignominiously to the curb. Eventually, I hit the felt, $40K in arrears. I re-upped at another table, and had built my stack up to $62K when disaster struck. Here's how the penultimate hand of my night went down; this is taken from the PokerStars hand history of the hand, with my opponent's name changed to "frustrated":

PokerStars Game #xxxxxxxxxxx: Hold'em Pot Limit (100/200) - 2010/03/24 xx:xx:xx
Table 'xxxxxxxxx' 9-max (Play Money) Seat #7 is the button
Seat 4: frustrated (17200 in chips)
Seat 7: neostreet (62600 in chips)
neostreet: posts small blind 100
frustrated: posts big blind 200
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to neostreet [Qc Qs]
neostreet: calls 100
frustrated: raises 400 to 600
neostreet: raises 400 to 1000
frustrated: raises 2000 to 3000
neostreet: raises 2000 to 5000
frustrated: raises 10000 to 15000
neostreet: calls 10000
*** FLOP *** [Jd 3s Qd]
frustrated: bets 2200 and is all-in
neostreet: calls 2200
*** TURN *** [Jd 3s Qd] [Kd]
*** RIVER *** [Jd 3s Qd Kd] [9d]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
frustrated: shows [Th Td] (a straight flush, Nine to King)
neostreet: shows [Qc Qs] (three of a kind, Queens)
frustrated collected 34400 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 34400 | Rake 0
Board [Jd 3s Qd Kd 9d]
Seat 4: frustrated (big blind) showed [Th Td] and won (34400) with a straight flush, Nine to King
Seat 7: neostreet (button) (small blind) showed [Qc Qs] and lost with three of a kind, Queens

After doubling up through me so improbably, frustrated immediately left the table. Utterly shell-shocked, I paid out one more big blind in a final hand with someone who joined the table at that point, then called it quits.

You may be wondering about the title of this post. Here's the explanation: I remember reading a comic book about 35 years ago which was a collection of stories of the supernatural. In one of them, a young man captures a leprechaun and it grants him a wish in return for its freedom. His wish is to bowl a really high score in bowling. The leprechaun grants him the wish, but warns him not to try to bowl a perfect 300. The young man agrees. When he starts bowling, however, he gets caught up in the excitement of bowling strike after strike. After 11 strikes, he only needs one more to get a perfect 300 score. Ignoring the leprechaun's warning, he throws another perfect ball, which heads right for the pocket and looks like it'll be a certain strike. However, the leprechaun appears in the lane just before the ball gets to the pocket and kicks it out of the way; none of the pins go down. Only the young man can see him; he's invisible to everyone else. Everyone else if mystified and flabbergasted by what they've just seen. The moral of the story is that it's not a good thing to chase perfection, particularly not with hubris. "Pride goeth before a fall", basically. I know I've been guilty of poker hubris lately, and an object lesson was certainly in order.

The poker gods were my invisible leprechauns tonight. My incredibly bad luck on the penultimate hand had me lying awake thinking over it. It added insult to injury that not only did my opponent make a straight, he made that rarest of rare hands, a straight flush. Since I hadn't memorized the hand, for quite a while I thought that the reason "frustrated" went all in was that he'd flopped a set of tens. I remembered the following facts about the hand: 1. I was dealt a pair of queens 2. he was dealt a pair of tens 3. the flop contained a queen, giving me a set 4. the turn was the king of diamonds 5. the river was the nine of diamonds 6. he made a straight flush with the 9 to king of diamonds 7. the PokerStars engine reported that I lost with a set of queens. So as you can see, I remembered everything except for two of the flop cards. Using the information I remembered, though, I was able to deduce that frustrated couldn't have flopped a set of 10s, for if he had, then I would have lost with a straight instead of with a set. When I realized he hadn't flopped anything but a long-shot straight draw, I realized he had bet extremely riskily and unwisely. Not only that, he'd done so from the very beginning of the hand, even before the flop. Going all in was an afterthought, really; he'd bet most of his stack before the flop. The only explanation I have for this absurd betting behavior was that he was fed up and frustrated.

Thinking over QQ vs. TT with a flop of Jd 3s Qd, there are only four ways the tens can win, each less likely than its predecessor: 1. either ten completes a straight 2. one of the tens completes a flush 3. both the turn and the river are tens, creating four of a kind, tens 4. one of the tens completes a straight flush. I knew that no full house could beat me, since I'd also have a full house in that case, and a guaranteed better one.

When I get a moment, I'm going to calculate the odds that TT beats QQ with that flop; I'm guessing it will be somewhere around the 1% mark.

delta: -34,800
balance: $365,827