I was playing poker last night (no limit Texas Holdem) and well into the tournament (I was chip leader at the time :-) I was dealt the Ace of Hearts and the Four of Hearts. When the flop came I could hardly believe my fecking eyes - the Two, Three and Five of Hearts were staring right back at me! I had flopped a straigh flush and the more I looked at it, the more beautiful it seemed. (For the non-poker heads amongst you, there are only 40 possible straight flushes out of a total of 2,598,960 possible five card combinations. It's the highest possible winning hand in poker and getting one is like winning the Lotto!)

Anyway, like a langer I checked the flop as I didn't want to give the game away. After the turn, the only other player in the hand thought long and hard and finally deciced to go all in. As you can imagine, at this point, I thought all my birthdays had come at once. There I was wondering how I could make some money out of this hand and the other guy only decides to go all in and save me the bother. Not surprisingly, it took me roughly a millisecond to decide to call his all in bet. Hmmm, I wonder if I'll ever get a straight flush again?

Unfortunately, the rest of the night didn't work out quite as well. I went into the heads up with more than twice as many chips as the other guy and from then on I didn't get a single hand. The other guy kept going all in and each time I didn't even have a lousy pair to call him with. Finally, when I had to go all in, the other guy had an Ace in his hand and ended up with four Aces by the river. It was just that kind of crazy night!

Labels: Poker