So I'm playing in a redonkulous dealer's choice 1/2 charity game. The structure should be unbeatable, but people are so awful (so awful), that I do well consistently.

They frequently play high or low spade in the hole wins half the pot type games, which I've become pretty good at. The nature of these games is that usually everyone but the person holding the spade is scared and is just check calling, and sometimes they throw out a bet/call. But when someone has a really strong made hand, and it's obvious the other person has the spade (or so they think), and there's a third person in the pot just calling, the locals like to call it "taking someone for a ride".

So anyway last night we were playing this one woman's favorite game (I think because it's so powerful to be the dealer in this game), which is 5 card draw, high spade wins half, bet or get out.

So it's on me to open and I've got 2229Q so I open, 6 people stay for the draw. I draw 2 and pull another deuce. The three villains in question this hand drew 1 (villain 1) 1 (villain 2) and 3 (villain 3). So it's on me to open again and I pull my own angle and say check. Dealer informs me that I can't check...

So I toss out $2, Villain 1 raises, villain 2 reraises, villain 3 caps it. folds around to me, and I toss in the $6 as villain 2 proudly exclaims "Looks like someone's gettin taken for a ride!", villain 1 folds, villain 2 calls. I tabled quads, villain 3 shows the ace of spades and villain 2 just kind of sat there looking confused, and finally turned over a flush and mucked it.


Of course this pales in comparison to some of the Omaha 8/b hands that have played out. (For some reason, this game seems impossibly difficult for some people to understand.) Let's just say there was a hand that involved a 4 way cap on a board of A235Tr, and no one had a wheel or a 6 high straight.