Crooked Straight | The Backdoor Straight: Ouch

It happens to everyone sometime. The one outer for the huge pot.

I got to Hollywood Park pretty early Sunday, around 11 a.m. The first table I sat at was extremely tight and I noticed that on the table behind us, there was a guy going all-in every other hand and saying that the money was nothing to him.

"Table change!"

I sat down and he was all-in on the first three hands, losing two of them. Then a player from the top section (where the $5/10 NL game was about to start) called him over and just like that he was gone.

So I followed him and went to the $400 NL game, which was terrible. The players were a lot worse on this table then they were on the $200 NL game that I was playing. I counted one, possibly two decent players out of the nine. Okay, maybe three but one was an open book. I'll call him "Open Book."

I found out that the wild player that I had followed was some movie producer and this is why he had so much money at his disposal. Within ten minutes he was in for $1200. Then he got a huge stack when he called an all-in with Ks2s and made the flush, then called an all-in with Kh2h and flopped a flush. It's funny because everyone wants him in the game, yet they berate him when he wins a hand. What's wrong with these people?

That's when "Open Book" doubled up on him with pocket aces. Now Open Book is sitting with a big stack, probably around $900.

The Producer raises to $35 blind and I call him with As6s. I probably should have re-raised but I had bad position with five players to act behind me. The flop comes A-Q-T. He checks, I bet and he calls (he was willing to call anything most of the time) and tells me "I have big potential." The turn is a second ten and he fires out $100. I made the mistake of calling him as he never really bluffs and the river was a jack. He had put me in before the river even came so I should have known he had the ten but I made the donk call and lost my first buy-in when he showed K-T.

So I rebuy for $500 and slowly build my stack up. I won a pretty big pot with AQ when the producer had Q7 and another guy was on a flush draw. Open Book also had won a big pot against The Producer and we were the two big stacks. The only hands I had seen Open Book show were AA and KK so I made a note to myself not to get in many hands with him without a good hand.

That's when the big kahuna aka el screw me royale went down.

I look at my cards on the button. KK. Raise it to $50 and get three callers, including Open Book, who is in the big blind and first to act. I'm thinking "Just make my life easy and flop me the king."

The flop comes 5, 4....king. Money.

Open Book comes out and fires $140 at the pot. The other two players fold. I'm thinking "Could he possibly have AK?" Maybe. Or maybe he flopped a set. There was no flush draw on board. I call.

The turn is an off-suit jack. My hand is still the nuts. He bets $240 this time.

I'm thinking about what to do and decide to raise him to $600. He instantly moves all-in for his whole stack and I instantly call him. He proudly turns over JJ like he is the next coming of Stu Ungar and I show him the kings. I have never seen a man freeze up like that. Gargoyle style.

Then the dealer peels off the river and it's the case jack. I had him covered by about $70 and the biggest pot of my life was lost to a one-outer.