Thursday night I started out really strong after winning about 20-25BB's or $40-50 in the first 15 minutes of sitting down. I was dealt pocket Aces and raised it up with several callers as usual. The flop came J3J (rainbow I think, either way the chance of a flush had no impact on this hand). This wasn't a great flop for my hand to say the least. I was in late position and a player from early position raises. Everyone calls all the way around to a new player two seats to my right. He re-raised. I didn't know how he played as I had just sat down and had never seen him before. For some reason, I got a semi-tight vibe from him, and I'm not sure how to explain that. That re-raise really bothered me because the 3rd jack puts me in bad shape so I tried to see if there were any other clues to just how strong his hand was. Typical players give off lots of big tells that you will eventually pick up on. One common one that I've noticed lately is when someone raises and then looks off elsewhere as if not interested in the hand, then they're usually holding a huge hand. On the flipside, if someone raises and stares around the table at the action going on, they usually have a good hand but it's easily cracked and they are concerned that someone might beat them. There are all kinds of little helpful things like that you can pick up.
So I looked over at this guy and he was looking directly at the flop and as I moved down to his chips I noticed something BIG. His hands were visibly shaking. I almost felt a little sorry for him in that moment because I know what that awkward, nervous feeling is like. Nope, he didn't have trips. He'd need a bigger hand than that to make his hands shake. He had a real monster. Full House or quads, no doubt about it. I put him on the full house since it was far more likely than quads which is hard to ever put somebody on. I had two outs, the remaining two Aces which requires about 14 and a half or so to call. The pot wasn't quite that big, but as I looked around the table I could tell there would be several callers and that would bring the pot odds to just about right (along with implied odds) to call. I just had to hope the first raiser didn't re-raise. It was a borderline decision due to the break even odds and not all that profitable even if it did work out. This is were a little bit of No Limit thought came in and I realized that if I catch my 2 outs I could win a BIG pot off of this guy and whoever else got trapped in between our hands. I called and then called another raise on the turn when the Ace didn't come. The pot was close to $40 (20BB's) at this point. The most beautiful Ace that I've ever seen fell on the river and I stole the pot away from him after he flopped a full house with his pocket 3's. "Nice hand" in a sincere tone was his only comment as he took the beat like a gentleman. I've got a lot of respect for that. Little did I know, I'd have my chance to do that same thing at the end of the night in an almost identical hand where, this time, I was the one that flopped a set with KK, turned a full house, and lost to a lone Ace on the river against pocket Aces, the two-out rivered full house in a massive pot.
Those are real heart breakers.
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