Feeling Good

I just got back from Little Rock, Ark., where I had a good weekend at a friend's wedding. I met some cool people, and I only played poker with Erin at the airport for a few minutes before his flight left.

But I did get to play in my brother's game on Thursday. Man oh man. My brother is OK at poker, but some of his friends seriously suck. I love it.

The best hand of the night came against the guy who beat me last time we played when he called with only overcards on the flop and caught an Ace to take down the pot. This time, he wouldn't be so lucky. I had an extra incentive because this guy can be kind of obnoxious. And he likes to think he's good at poker. Which he's not.

We saw the flop heads-up, and I caught of set of 9s. The other two cards were a 6 and a 4. No flush possibility. He checked and I bet $2. He called. The turn brought a 10. He checked, I bet $3, and he said, "I'll put in five."

"What does that mean?" I asked. I wanted to know whether he was raising my bet by $5, or if he was trying to raise me $2 to $5 total. He said he wanted it to be $5 total, and I informed him that he needed to raise at least the amount of my bet.

"Fine," he said. "Let's raise it to $10 total."

"Fine," I said. "I'm all in."

"Fold," he said.

He folded so fast he didn't even realize that he could have called my all-in bet for only a couple of dollars more. I offered him the chance to pull his cards out of the muck and call the $2 more (this is a friendly game, after all), but he declined. He said he had QJ for a straight draw. I raked in a big pot.

Other fun hands came up when I had pocket 4s on a flop of 236 rainbow. I looked at the other guy in the pot, who was completely wasted.

"You don't have jack shit," I said. "I'm all in."

He took the bait and called with 75! Of course he didn't catch anything.

Another time, I called down with a pair of 7s, knowing my opponent didn't have anything.

All in all, every one of my reads was correct. And I was able to tame the fish, who would much rather just redistribute money among themselves.

Good times, good times.

I'm reading Barry Greenstein's "Ace on the River" now, which is very good so far. It's thoughtfully written, and the glossy pages really help the photos of poker rooms from around the world.