Crack the Hand for $20

[Harv72b]

First things first--you deserve to have "NIT" tattooed on your forehead for calling down with aces here. Okay, on to more important things.

It's vital to get inside the mind of the donkey. He doesn't raise preflop because something always goes wrong after the flop--if he's got AK it's all little cards and he loses to some idiot that coldcalls with 99; if he's got KK then an ace flops and he loses to some dolt who just had to call with AQ. Aces? Forget about it...someone else always flops a set, or a flush, or a straight. His only hope to end the night ahead is to beat these losers at their own game, and take every draw to the river no matter how many bets it takes. So him limping second in tells us precisely zero about his hand.

But hark, what's this? One of those aggressive dolts raises behind him, just like they always do, and this time he's had enough. He's mad as hell, and he's not going to take it anymore! He scans his screen and quickly relocates the "RAISE" button, right where he left it on the bottom right, and forcefully clicks it in a fit of self-righteous triumph. "Take THAT!", he thinks smugly as he smiles at his cunning in beating the bullies at their own game.

But...what hand would villian feel so forcefully about that he would go to such extremes?

We can eliminate the other two aces, both by sheer mathematicaly probability and by the fact that donkey is going to slowplay those babies & cleverly raise the river when the fourth diamond hits. KK is also unlikely, because donkey has long since learned that the bullies always hit their ace when he's got KK...but he still likes to raise the river just to be sure. No, this calls for a strong hand that plays well against a bully that just keeps raising and raising with crap hands, only to get lucky that he never hits his flushes.

Donkey's hand is obviously A[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] 4[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]. There's nothing else which would muster such confidence in him, both preflop and on the flop and river. He's still smiling smugly to himself about his great triumph over the stupid bully, although he's a little sad that this time the other guy didn't raise him on the turn.