Here's a hand I just played, now the situation was a little different then most poker so follow along.

I'm playing a 2-5 spread limit game, $1/$2 blinds, you can bet or raise 2-5 anytime.

This is a charity poker game in chicago run by http://www.rockfordcharitablegames.com/ they have some interesting house rules, (the'll come into play later)

Ok, I'm in mid position (2 off button).

I get dealy A10o.

UTG raises it to $4.

There's 1 caller, and I call (I know this was probably loose but it's besides the point).

Flop is A 10 10 rainbow

The UTG who raised preflop checks, and the old lady (who I've noticed plays Ace anything to the river when she pairs up) also checks. I bet out $2.

The UTG raises me to $4, old lady calls, and I call.

Turn is 6 of clubs, flushes are killed.

UTG bets $5, old lady calls, I raise to $10, and I'm all in,


At this point I have $8 chips and $40 in my wallet. She asks me if I'm playing table or out of pocket. I inform her I'm playing out of pocket. I buy another $40 in chips, and keep playing the hand,

UTG re-raises to $15, the old lady calls, I then cap it at $20.

turn is a 9 of hearts.

Since there's still 3 people in the hand, there is a max of 3 raises on the river, again the action is capped at $20 and all 3 of us are in.

As if you haden't guessed, the other player turns over AA, and in a scene straight out of rounders, my flopped boat loses to a bigger boat...The ONLY possible bigger boat.

I wont lie, it hurt, but here's my questions:

1.) if you flop a boat, where do you shift from re-re-raising to just calling. especially if you've got the second nut hand. 2.) would you have decided to play table stakes or played out of pocket?

My thoughts at the time was this: it was a fairly loose table and I was not worried about the old lady, and I really felt the UTG raiser was holding AK or the other 10, hell I really expected to see A10.

If it was heads up I probably would have just called after the rereaise on the turn, but because the old lady kept calling, I felt I was in a situation much like a hi-low game where you hold the low and the other raiser has the high and you're both raising because there's someone caught in the middle calling.

I felt like reraising wasnt a bad idea even without the nuts, because:

A.) with 3 people in the hand at the begining of the river, there was a 3 raise limit, not unlimited like it would have been if the round was started heads up. B.) the UTG's raise to $4 pre-flop seemed like a AK type of hand, the max raise at the time would have been to $7, and every other time UTG has had a pocket pair (even as low as 66) he's raises the max. C.) I flopped a freaking full house for petes sake. I cant even imagine what the odds are of flopping the second highest boat, but I felt like not playing it the way I did is playing scared. I vary rarely ever have the absolute nuts, so 2nd nuts seem pretty nice.

I guess my overall thoughts are that in the long run, shying away from playing this hand big will cost me more money in lost wins then it will from a the rare beat by someone holding the stone cold nuts.

I'm feeling like Mike McD at this point, and I don't even have decent looking russian women coming to my house when I owe money. I'd really like to hear what everyone on RGP thinks about this.



On a lighter note, I realised ill be in vegas the same time as grubby from pokergrub.com

Hopefully we can play some hands and break some tourists =)

--Chris Falco