Suck Out

1-2 No Limit game, Greektown Casino. I open to 15 under the gun with aces, next guy to act raises to 35, everyone else folds. He has about 450, I have him covered. I raise it up to 110 and he calls quickly but not very happily. Flop is Kxx, he lunges forward with his whole body and shoves about 100 in chips into the pot, out of turn. After being warned by the dealer he sheepishly takes his chips back. I check and he makes the same bet. I feel pretty strongly that he has exactly KK. It makes so much sense. But can't he have AK? Maybe even KQ suited? Could even be QQ or JJ played very badly, or a weird bluff. He just called a big river bet against me with ace-high, so he thinks I'm full of shit. Can I really fold aces with a 1.5 pot-sized bet left on the flop? I can't. I go all-in. He calls.

"You have kings?"

"Yeah."

We both flip our cards. The turn is a seven. I don't really see the river, I just hear the table go nuts. He stands up, stares blankly at the table for a few seconds, and walks away. I rake in a $900 pot.

1. Sometimes the biggest pots are the least interesting. There are points where both of us could have played differently, but all the money was going in regardless. Poker is a forest. You learn which plants are good to eat and which are poisonous, how to hunt certain animals and avoid others, but sometimes while you're walking through the forest you get struck by lightning. There's not much you can do about it.

2. I'm told that, according to quantum physics, there exist many alternate realities*. In most of them I don't win that pot. I watch my good session go sour. I take a walk outside and try to figure out if I'm in the right state of mind to keep playing. Maybe I quit or maybe I keep playing. Maybe I go into a tailspin and lose all the cash I brought that day, or maybe I rebound and get back ahead. But today I don't have to deal with that.  Today I get to be Nate who won a $900 pot. It's pretty fun.

*As far as I can tell, the work of quantum physicists has mostly to do with balancing complex equations, but the effect of quantum physics on the rest of us is to give quasi-scientific justification to vague, spiritual and/or metaphorical statements, e.g., "Everything is energy." That and the atomic bomb I guess.