MIRACLE CARDS

I haven't had many bad beats lately in the ring game. This morning I was playing on Poker Stars, a place reported to be full of tough players. At least at the $.50/$1 no-limit, I have found the opposite to be true. The downside is that the bad beat ratio increases. I've been buying in at small amounts since the site is new to me and today I was sitting with $20 in chips one off the button and the some limpers in the pot before me and I have QQ. I raise to $5 which is 1/4 my stack. I get two callers. The flop comes 8JT all clubs. I have the Q of clubs and the pot is more than my stack and I decide I'll go all-in so that the A or K of clubs doesn't have the right odds. I get one caller and he turns over K7 of clubs. I don't understand that preflop call at all. It might have made sense if I had $100 in front of me and he was getting great implied odds. He had to call my $5 for no more than $15 in the future, especially since the second caller was behind him.

I decide to buy back in for $40 and double up pretty quickly when QQ two off the button raises into my AA on the button. The flop made it look like I was on a flush draw and I doubled up on the guy. The next hand I have $77 and see a $4 raise from an aggressive player in early position. I call as do two others. The flop comes 8Q7. The preflop raiser comes firing with $14. With no flush draw I decide to cold call and raise on the turn. We surprisingly get another caller. The turn comes 8. Now I have a fullboat 7s full of 8s. The preflop raise bets $34 and I go all-in. This guy must have AA KK or AQ. I just don't see him on a set of Queens because he bets $14 on the flop. The river comes 6 and I'm licking my chops at a monster pot and the damn thing slides to the preflop raiser. What do you think he had?

86. He bet all the way with 86. He must have thought it a genius play when he hit that third 8. He needed runner runner to beat me and yet he got two unlikely cards after an unlikely preflop raise. I hope I run into him again.