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Rock on

Hands up anyone who has had the following experience. You think you are doing well in a hand and then a particularly awful card turns up which you assume has completely ruined the deal for you.

Only later - when the hand is over - do you realise that this card was probably one of the best that could have come.

Recently I was playing in a four-handed limit game which featured a player so tight that the label "rock" was not really appropriate. Compared to our friend, rocks exhibit a tendency to bounce around, have fun and generally live life to the full. Whenever this player so much as breathed on the pot, everyone ran for cover. Okay - slight exaggeration, but you get the picture.

On the hand in question I opened from the cut-off with Ac-10s. The uber-rock, sitting on my left on the button, immediately three bet. The blinds, rather sensibly, wanted no part of this. Naturally I called but I couldn't help feeling that a fold was unlikely to be far away.

However, the flop was a miracle: Ah-10d-4c, giving me top two pair. At this point, I only had one thought in my head - the rock has A-K even he will have to pay me off big time here. So, how to play the hand and squeeze him for the maximum? The best bet seemed to be a plan of check-raising the flop (guessing that even the rock will then three-bet with A-K) and then going for another check raise on the turn. If he has a weaker hand such as Q-Q, then check-raising the flop is probably the best I'm going to do anyway since the ace will freeze him up.

So, I check-raised him and - sure enough - he three bet at once, confirming my read. I called, intending to continue with my planned turn check raise. However, the turn card brought the rather ugly Ah-10d-4c-Kh. Now I paused. Well, I didn't so much pause as mumble various expletives under my breath, furious at having been hit by a three-outer. The fact that only five seconds previously I had hit a miraculous flop did not register highly in my thoughts at this time.

I changed my mind and, despite holding a very powerful hand for a short-handed game, I meekly check-called the turn and did the same when a blank appeared on the river, expecting that I was paying him off. Indeed I was, as was confirmed when he flipped over 10h-10c for a flopped set.

The Kh on the turn - which I had so freely cursed - was actually a rather good card for me, despite the fact that it had not improved either of our hands. It slowed me down and saved me going off for a couple of extra big bets.

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