Schizo Poker

I hope that I can look as relaxed as Alan in the home game on Friday night did the next time I hit quads. For this play you can call him The Bus Driver because he totally took me to school.

I occasional peg Alan for a draw monkey — meaning he will overpay for draws. I raised a bit preflop with A9, and Alan called in the BB. It didn’t surprise me. I’m used to him calling me with garbage hands, and since I do have a reputation for raising with The Hammer (27o) and The Jimmy (42o) his instinct to call me with any two cards might not be so wrong.

Anyway, the flop was 966, two diamonds. I bet it out and get a call. I figure him for the flush draw, since he does love to draw. The turn was a J, and I fire again, he only calls, so I’m not worried that the Jack helped him. The river is a blank (an undercard not completing the flush) so I check, since a bet can only be a mistake here if the J did end up helping him.

Alan fires the rest of his stack into the pot. His bet is only about 1/3 of the pot so I find the easy call with second pair/top kick, figuring my check on the river opened it up for him to bluff or bet his underpair.

It turns out he had flopped quads and was just letting me bet into him the whole way. He had masterfully gotten all of his chips in with quads and I had no clue until I saw the cards. When I saw them my head hit the table flabbergasted.

It was a great lesson. Alan figured that the best way to get all his chips in was to let me fire away, and he was right. I also wasn’t as observant as I could have been. If I had been paying better attention to his eyes, maybe I would have noticed that his eyes weren’t searching the table as a drawer’s eyes are wont to do. If I had noticed that, I might have gotten suspicious and shut it down. Or maybe he was laying on fake tells and staring at the table and I just missed it. What I didn’t miss was that he looked totally relaxed, not shaking and excited — the telltale sign of a great hand.

So how do you do that? How do you flop quads and give off no tells? I gotta figure that one out so that when I flop my quads against Alan in the future, I can get my ten bucks back.