He who laughs first, laughs last
Occasionally I play poker against my fellow work colleagues. Usually we play Texas Holdem but last week someone came up with the idea that we should try Omaha instead. Since many co-workers didn’t know how to play Omaha, there where a lot of murmuring like: “why”, “I don’t wanna”, “bah” “humbug”, and “nuts” going on. Finally we ended up with only three players.
One thing that you probably don’t know is that we don’t play live, even though we work in the same, let’s say “office”, instead we create a private table at some online poker room and play there. Why so you may ask? Isn’t it easier to just take a deck of cards and play instead of all the hassle with creating rooms, remembering passwords and maybe worst of all, paying rake? Our collective answer is simply: no. You see, we are lazy, or at least “comfortable” and we don’t like to get up from our comfy chairs, therefore, it’s much easier to play online. Not to mention the joy of having someone else dealing the cards and keeping tracks of the game.
So there we were, poised to play Omaha. The fee was the usual $10 + $1 rake, per player. Normally the prize money is then divided among the top three finishers which can add up to a hundred for the winner, but that’s when we play Holdem. Now with only three players we decided that “the winner takes all”.
Usually I do rather well against my work mates, but this was unchartered waters for me and to make things worse, “King Cheese” as we call him, is a fierce shorthanded player. My other opponent “Skydiver” is generally a good Holdem player but this was Omaha! And by the way, he hasn’t had much luck lately. So we got our 1000 chips and the game started with blinds 10-20.
At first things seemed to go well for me and I quickly doubled up, taking about 500 from each of the other players when I hit the nut flush and they both missed their draw to a full house. I begun to feel rather pleased with my position, but I had forgotten all about the sleazy “King Cheese” and his luck.
A couple of hands later he and I got all in on the flop when I had the nut straight and top two pairs. The “King” had bottom two pairs and a backdoor flush draw. Needless to say, he got the backdoor flush on the river and I was down to about 1400 chips. In the very next hand he took out “Skydiver” when he outdrew “Skydivers” top set with a straight, again on the river.
So it was him against me, but actually I wasn’t that worried, I just “knew” that he eventually must run out of luck. Man was I wrong! We fought back and forth for a while but when the blinds was 80-160 I went all in with the following hand: AcKcKhQh and was quickly called by “King Cheese” who held AdKsQc4c. He had just a few chips more then me so if I won this hand it would virtually be all over.
In my mind I was already seeing images of me being congratulated by my colleagues as the first ever winner of “office” Omaha. What joy, but instead I was rudely awakened from my dreams by the “Kings” characteristic laughter. You see, the flop was 8h3h2s. Nut flush draw for me and “just” an inside straight draw for him. He had only three winning cards, i.e. any five that wasn’t the five of hearts. The turn was 7d but the river was of course the five of diamonds!
And so he got his straight, the money, the glory and the opportunity to once again laugh at his co-worker. Well let’s just hope that the old proverb “he who laughs first, laughs last” is true.
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