Folding Quads... and being right.
Every Friday, me and a few friends all get together and play a tournament for small stakes. I have fun doing it because the environment is awesome, they are good friends, and are better than average poker player (well, some are average, haha).
So I was playing a cash game a couple of days ago with my poker buddies. One of them decided to stake me in it with 40x BB ($20) in a $0.25/$0.50 live cash game. The others bought in for around the same as we proceeded to play dealers choice. I pick some funky games to see how people’s playing styles are, and to see how they deal with these new games.
Needless to say, the ones that I find the best for being an ATM leave early with a 1.5x their buy-in profit. I was steady with around $25-$27 with 6 people at the table. We decide to play NL Baseball with a $0.25 ante.
Baseball is a stud type of game. It’s like Stud Hi, but if you have a 3 or a 9, it’s wild. And if you have a 4 showing, you can ante again and buy another card face down.
So I start out with [4 8] 9. I look around the table; no one really has any of my cards that I need for any backdoor draws, so I am pretty confident in the deck. I bet $0.50 as a bet to make people scared. I get two callers. One with a J showing, and one with a Q showing.
4th street comes and I get a 3 as my up card, giving me one of three pretty strong hands. Two pair (4’s and 8’s), trips (8’s or 4’s), and a straight draw (can get a 3, 5, 6, 7, or 9). All of the cards I am drawing to: three 3’s, three 4’s, four 5’s, four 6’s, four 7’s, three 8’s, or three 9’s. I would say one or two of the wilds were out, and maybe 2 or 3 or my straight cards. In total, I am drawing to 20 minimum, 24 max cards. So needless to say, I bet $1 (having 2 wilds showing, I automatically have two aces showing) to try and win the pot right there. It’s folded around to the person to my right who calls after about 10 seconds of thinking.
His board has 2 queens showing. Now I immediately put him on either natural two pair, or a wild card under there for trips. He ALWAYS bets with his strong hands and will some times chase a draw, but that is rare. And since he didn’t have a draw, or raised, I couldn’t put him on a super strong hand. Plus, with my two wilds showing, I could have anything underneath for trips.
5th street gives him a rag and me a 7 for the nut straight in my hand. I have trip 7’s showing, so I bet $1.25. He thinks for a while again. He sees now that I have trip 7’s, could possibly have quads by now, or even a boat. He calls. This tells me that he has trip queens (more than likely with a wild since he doesn’t draw that often. He wouldn’t call me with natural trips when he was drawing to a natural boat when I can beat him with a better one with my wilds).
So I have a straight, with a chance to draw at a boat and even quads. 6th street comes and gives me a King and him another rag card (I think he has 6 2 Q Q showing or something. Just know those cards didn’t help his cause). So I have trip Kings showing and I bet $1.75. He now looks at our boards. He looks faintly dismal. Like he wants to fold, but he can’t. Almost as if he doesn’t want to give up the hand just yet. So after another 20 seconds of thinking, he calls.
7th street comes and gives me a 7 for quad 7’s. I bet small, $2. He looks at his 7th card, thinks for a few seconds, and throws in $6 more, $8 total. This is a truly curious and scary bet. I think about flat calling him here. This would put me under my buy-in by only a dollar or two, and I get to see if he was drawing, has a boat and I would win, or worse, has me beat. I sit there, with the $6 in chips in my hand. I look curiously at him, then at his board. Of course, the whole table was interested by this point.
I look at him, just puzzled. What could he be flat calling with and then raise on the end? Could he have had two pair and caught a wild or another card for a boat? Could he have just trips and was trying to push me off my hand? Was it a big huge bluff?
The only thing that came to my mind and stuck was quad queens. And it repeated over and over in my head, Quad Queens, Quad Queens, Quad Queens. I still don’t know what to do, until I make a gutsy move.
I ask the table is it alright if I turn my hand over and it won’t be dead. Everyone agrees, and I turn over my 7. I don’t look for his reaction, as I am pretty sure he knows that I have quads at this point with two wilds and me betting every street. But I know his personality and I know he can’t resist talking at the table. Even if the only thing to talk about is the hand, he will talk.
But he isn’t that much of a chatterer just likes to keeps things interesting in that sense. So he sees my quads and everyone else looks shocked. As if I could even think about the decision of calling or folding. He then proceeds to say “Well, I can tell you for sure than I have another queen in the hole.”
I know him, and he doesn’t lie about his hand. He will make it seem weak, but he doesn’t lie. And that is what I am thinking he is trying to do here, but maybe with a boat. This is a true mind game he is playing with me, and I am digging myself deeper and deeper in this hole that I don’t think I can get out of.
He says it a few more times, and then slips up and says “I can tell you I have at least one wild.” Now, others at the table will think he is trying to make it seem like he has quads, when he doesn’t. They may think he is trying to be a true poker player and make me lay down the best hand by his talk alone. But like I said before, I know he doesn’t lie about his hand. For the months that I have been playing with him, not once has he lied about his hand.
So now my decision was made, but I still wasn’t 100% sure that he had quads. I was more 90%, but still, that is high enough for me to fold my quad 7’s.
I haven’t folded yet, as I want to see if I can make him turn up his hand somehow. He isn’t the type of player to just turn it over to show people. He needs incentive. So I say “I’ll pay you a dollar to show your quads.” He excitedly says yes. I throw in a dollar chip into the pot, and he shows his quad queens on 7th (he started out with a wild, and caught a natural queen on 7th). I say nice hand, and fold my quad 7’s.
So in the end, that is the trouble with wild games. But don’t get me wrong, I love wild games and thrive off of dealers choice games since players have to know a variety of games and be able to switch up their play accordingly. When wilds are in play, your royal flush could be beat by 5-of-a-kind, full houses are left and right, and you can never know for sure what the other person has.
The wild card is such a great element to the game, it adds more of a mind game than people imagine, and makes you second guess yourself more than a normal game without wilds would. That is why I love dealers choice; especially with my group of poker buddies. I can have a fun time doing it, make money off the donks who don’t grasp the concept of some games or don’t know what their hand is in a wild game, and play mind games more with the people I am playing this.
Anyone else got some crazy games of wild poker to tell? I got one more with an Omaha H/L game that I will tell after a few posts.
Want a real challenge? PM me about the Chris Ferguson challenge! (which I can now say I have completed myself!)
"I came into this world against my consent, and I will leave this world against my will." -Phil Laak
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I mean the only hand he can legitimately value raise is quads (assuming he's competent), and it doesn't seem to even cross your mind that this could be a bluff.
Originally Posted by gamer4life27
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