I can pretty much guarantee that you didn’t have an ace

Whilst most of my poker related posts involve me sitting at a no limit hold em table I do make the occasional foray onto a PLO table. In terms of action I actually prefer the game over NLH but it’s really only the bigger rooms which have a PLO game running at anything other than the most busy times.

I’m not that great a player though and my tiny mind can barely cope with remembering 2 cards in front of me so when I’ve got to remember 4 I usually make more of an effort concentrating on the cards rather than chatting to other players at the table - which is why I’ve never had anything interesting enough to make a post out of, until now.

I’ve only been sat down for 5 minutes and the first hand I play is AA22 double suited - I raise UTG and get called by literally all the table. Flop is AA2. Although this is a great flop it’s actually too good - any bet here is going to scare everyone off so I decide to see if someone wants to have a bluff at it. The blinds check, as do I, and the player on my left throws out $25 (into $90). The button calls and I call as well. I couldn’t even tell you what the turn was and again I decide to check. Player to my left now bets $60. The button folds and I have a decision to make. If I call here I really can’t see him bluffing the river so I put in a min raise with the intention of putting in a smallish bet on the river. He tanks. Then keeps tanking. Then he starts muttering to himself “ace is no good here, you’re behind a house, you’ve got to fold a naked ace”. This goes on for what seems like forever - it’s a good 5 or 6 minutes and I’ve already ordered another beer and actually been served before he makes a decision. He folds, asking if I had a full house.

I don’t respond to him and I scoop the pot silently. Meanwhile he’s busy telling everyone how he made a good fold by folding his ace. I chuckle silently to myself and get ready to forget it ever happened but this guy goes on - for about half an orbit he’s proudly congratulating himself that he got away from his supposed ace. I turn to him and jokingly say “if you folded an ace you’re a better player than I am”. He sees this as a compliment and replies “Thanks - I’m always wary of a house with flopped trips and I knew I was behind when you min raised”. He has no element of sarcasm or joking in his voice and he sounds like he’s convinced himself here as well as trying to convince anyone who is listening.

But he keeps talking about this hand and we’re well over an orbit later and it’s getting silly that he’s still going on about it. So I turn to him and quite loudly say “From all that self congratulation I can pretty much guarantee that you didn’t have an ace”. This seems to offend him. He replies “So you’re calling me a liar are you?”

Now if this had only gone on for a couple of minutes after the hand I would have thought that he was just fishing for information about my hand so I’d have probably just ignored him. But we’re now around 15 minutes since the actual incident - I’d ordered and been served another beer which probably loosened my tongue a bit. So I decide that it’s not a backdoor request for information and that the guy is just a bit of a tool and actually reply to him “Yep - if you had an ace were never folding”. This doesn’t appease him - in fact he gets worse.

“That’s out of order” he’s virtually shouting now. Oh god - another nutter at my table and I’m going to be careful about my words now despite the beer (remain good natured and it winds them up more http://ayecarambapoker.blogspot.com/2018/08/why-are-you-even-in-insert-expletive.html?m=1).

He continues shouting “You called me a liar, I swear on baby Jesus I had an ace and folded it”. Oh joy - it’s not just your standard nutter but a full on god bothering one.

Ignoring him isn’t an option now as he’s probably not going to shut up until I put him out of his misery. So I calmly reply to him “I really don’t care who you swear on as there’s no way you had an ace - and how do I know that? Because I had 4 aces and I’m pretty sure that there’s still only 4 of them in the deck”. Half the table is laughing now and our nutter suddenly shuts up before picking up his chips and stating that he’s not sitting there being called a liar.

Now we’ve all misread or misremembered our hand before but the fact that he’s talked about holding an ace during the hand suggests that he’s a few cards short of a full deck.