[Hoss1193]

I've been playing recently in smaller WA cardrooms. The jackpots in these places aren't the bad-beat kind. Rather, they award a jackpot if you hit a straight flush or quads. Obviously, hit much more often than the bad-beats, sometimes several in one night, and they're usually a couple hundred dollars, sometimes between $500-$1000.

A couple of nights ago at Suquamish (4/8), I held pocket KK and the flop came K2K; I was looking at a $200 jackpot. One guy stayed in. This player was pretty lousy, had a lucky run earlier in the night, but had dwindled his stack down to maybe $50. Since I was already getting the $200 payout, I just checked to him, and he bet into me on flop and turn. At river, I told him "you REALLY REALLY REALLY want to CHECK this. LOOK AT THE BOARD." I couldn't tell him that I had the quads, because by the rules, that would have invalidated the jackpot. Everyone else at the table immediately understood my meaning and intent. I guess he didn't understand, and he bet anyway. He showed 22 for the boat, and of course I won the pot and jackpot as well.

Well, I had $200 coming to me, and I wanted to keep this player in the game for a while, so I took the pot, chopped it myself, and gave him half. The table generally agreed (it appeared to me, anyway), that it was a cool thing to do.

Ever since, I've been second-guessing myself on this. On the one hand, I showed some generosity and appeared to earn some goodwill points at the table. I also had my ulterior motive of keeping him in the game longer; he was definitely the big fish that night. On the other hand, I had already warned the guy in the clearest way I could, and the money I gave back to him he would lose anyway, just probably to someone else. Also, I feel I may have showed some weakness to the other players at the table (several of whom were pretty good).

Interested in your thoughts; should I have warned him in the first place? Should I have played more aggressively against him, knowing I had $200 coming guaranteed? Should I have chopped that $80 pot and given him $40? I know the conventional answer is "No Way!"....just wonder if it was an astute "image" move, as I intended, or just plain dumb.