How not to celebrate a birthday.....

The one thing about Poker is no matter how many times you have played it. No matter how many years you may have played, you will probably see something new every day you play.

Today I did. I just participated in the hand of the century. It is hard to imagine I will ever see anything quite so unlikely or so emotionally satisfying.

I sat down at a 3/5 No Limit game at Tulalip Casino. There was an Asian woman who was celebrating her 39th birthday by drinking all day. She was loud, she was obnoxious, she was drunk, and she would go all in with no hand or any hand. I also suspect she was maniac-depressive on a maniac episode.

She would lose a thousand. Then she would re-buy and go all in on a 5 and a 7 for $500.

Of course the KK would call her and she would catch a 5 and a 7 for two pair to get a thousand back.
I was getting a headache from her noise and I didn’t wish to play poker like this so I moved to the bigger game that was just opening up. She moved there.

She continued that pattern and I won a couple of smaller pots. However, I wasn’t willing to move in $500 pre-flop, so I couldn’t play much and folded respectable hands when she would do that.

Now comes the hand of the century.

I looked down at pocket tens on the button. A bet for $25 was made, then it was called by three people. I decided since I had been playing so tight this would be a good time to try to steal the $100 out there so I raised it to $125. The person to my left, who had about as many chips as I had, re-raised it to $325.

The yelling birthday girl goes all in for $450. The seat to my right goes all in for $450.

I was praying he wouldn’t bet, so it would be an easy decision for me to fold. It is now $325 more to me, but I had won about $700 so far and the odds were acceptable, so I decided to gamble by calling.

The flop came 5,5,Q The guy with chips looks at me and checks. I check back. The turn comes another 5. I have a full house with 10’s, but I don’t think that is going to be good enough to win this hand. He checks and I check.

The river comes the 4th five, putting quad 5’s on the board with a queen kicker. Any Ace or King is going to win the pot and I am looking at tens.

He checks, I check and the four of us turn over our cards. The guy to my right has 88, I have 10,10, the guy to my left has JJ, and the screamer has QQ, who proceeds to scream at the top of her lungs “I won, I won.” Not once, not twice, but more times then I could count. This was not your ordinary screaming either. This was glass shattering, hands over their ears by the persons on either side of her, and potential serious ear damage screaming. “I won, I won, I won….” finally someone got her attention and told her this $1700 pot she was screaming, that she thought she had won, was a 4 way split. She did not win it.

Everybody who played won, because the best hand was the board quad 5’s with a queen kicker. It didn’t matter that she had 3 queens. We all shared the board Queen, and no one had a King or an Ace that would have been higher then the board.

Now her screaming of ecstasy turned into shrieks of cursing. The guy next to her, told her to shut up, and they got into a yelling match. Then the floor person came over to try to quiet her down and she walked out of the room, while yelling at the dealer, the floor person, and the player to her right in a rapid, maniac, shrieking manner.

As we stacked our $450 of chips each, that we had put in the pot, the smiles were ear to ear. Even the people who were not in the hand, and the 20 or so people who had gathered around the table to watch the spectacle were laughing and talking about that hand.

The river 5 was the only card in the deck that could have produced that four-way split.

She had the best hand from Pre-Flop thru the turn, and only the highest mathematically improbability possible in poker could have had this result.

Only the emotion, the drama, the probabilities, and the psychology of poker could have produced a experience like this. It could not have been scripted any better.