Rockets and Fishhooks at Commerce Casino

John talked me into meeting him, Chris and Tim at Commerce last Monday night. Ok, so it didn't take much. There's been much talk of how loose the $100 NL tables are, and I wanted to get back in there. I had played some at the $200 NL tables, but a nightmare session caused me to swear off Commerce for a while. Witness the return...

I folded everything for the first 3+ orbits. My cards were that bad. My blind was raised every time, and I'm not going to defend a J3 suited. My first playable hand was pocket aces. I raised, got two callers and a 872 flop, two diamonds. I go all-in, and get a caller who is holding... wait for it... J9, no diamonds. I have never in my life gotten such a thin call holding aces. As I was stacking those chips, I announced, "Now I don't want everyone thinking all I play is aces. It just happened to be the first playable hand I saw."

I also had the table captain on my left scare me out of entering a pot. As I was reaching to call with my QT of clubs, he said "You call, I raise blind!" with his cute little accent. I was startled, and I folded. Apparently when you throw me out of my poker comfort zone, I respond by folding decent holdings. The flop was J, 8, 3, all clubs. Cue internal swear words. Turn was a 9, river was another J. And Chris took down a huge pot with J9. So Table Captain actually saved me a large chunk of change. (Chris doesn't like folding top pair, and he would've improved as the hand progressed.)

Play progressed, and two of the huge donators left the table (one of which was the guy that called my aces with a gutshot straight draw). I dropped down below $50, so I rebought another $100. I have the button and Jc, Jh. Two stoners limp in for $3 each, and the raise-happy bastard (RHB from here on) on my immediate right raises to $23. I give him credit for AQo, and prefer a call to a reraise - perhaps due to the pocket tens I had to muck when the flop hit AKQ five minutes before. To my surprise, Stoner1 and Stoner2 both call.

The flop comes 8c, 6c, 4h. Pretty darn good flop for fishhooks. The stoners have roughly $60 left each, and go all-in into a $80+ pot. Pair with a straight draw? Sure, and probably a flush draw to go with it. RHB goes into the tank and thinks... and thinks.. and thinks. Giving me the idea that he's weak as hell. He calls, and I go over the top of him for all of my money, an additional $50 or so. He hates it, but he's priced into a call, and he has me covered. Main pot + 2 sides pots > $400.

I didn't know it at the time, but I had the table in bad shape. With the help of the odd-calculator at cardplayer.com, this is where we stood:
High Plains Drifter: Jc, Jh
Stoner1: 7d, 7h
Stoner2: 5s, 5c
RHB: Ad, 5d

Preflop: High Plains Drifter 49.7%, Stoner1 16.5%, Stoner2 8.6%, RHB 25.2%
Postflop: 71.3%, 7.6%, 5.4%, 15.7%

On the drive home, I realized at this point that I am in the lead, and worried about a collective 6 outs (one five, three aces, two sevens), and I've got the best backdoor flush draw if the turn is a club. Can you guess which card came to turn my best hand into the worst?
.....
.....
.....
That's right, the seven of spades. I went from 71% to win, drawing dead on the river (ok, the case 5 would've put a straight on the board and quartered the pot) - two 8-high straights, and a set of 7's. But I'm not gonna fret. 71% of the time, I'm gonna be the one raking in that huge mf'ing pot.