A rush to judgement...

[cockpit]

...or don't be too quick to judge a book by its cover.

Saturday 1:30 AM I took a seat in a $10-20 HE game at Borgata. The game seemed moderately loose with one man of about 60 years of age sitting three seats to my right who considered himself the table expert.

I happen to be a fairly quiet guy with a conservative look, and it's happened more than a few times that poker players have assumed me to be a rock when I enter a game because of my appearance. Fine with me! Especially this time.

During the first two orbits I was seated I was dealt NOT ONE card higher than a 9. Every single hand was an automatic fold. And those 18 hands were enough for the expert to start commenting to his neighbors about the "rock." I don't think he realized that I could hear him, but I wasn't going to do anything to discourage him. A few more trash hands were dealt to me and then I looked down to find AA in MP. A few limpers to me, I raised and all folded to the blinds who called despite the expert's warning that I was probably holding Aces. The limpers folded. I played the hand aggressively and when I showed the Aces to win at the end it confirmed for the expert that he had a dead read on me. It wasn't going to take much on my part to maximize this opportunity!

Sidebar: Since I had no cards to play for the first 20 or so hands it gave me a good opportunity to try to form my own reads. One of them was that the expert had a nervous leg that constantly shook up and down. Except for when he had a big pocket pair or an overpair [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]. Then his leg would be perfectly still [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

A few hands after the Aces, I was dealt 5s in MP. The expert was UTG and raised to $20. His leg wasn't shaking which signaled a big pair. Figuring that I could outplay him after the flop, I wanted to play the expert heads up. I re-raised to $30 and knocked everyone out. The flop came A,J,x and the shaking leg came back! The expert was afraid of the Ace. He made a show of coming out for $10 which was obviously an effort to knock me out as he was likely holding Kings or Queens. Of course I re-raised. The expert announced, "If the rock's got Aces, I'm folding these," then showed his big pair to his neighbors and tossed them in the muck.

Unfortunately, the table broke soon after. But not before I had some time to make a few more steals, since the whole table was now convinced I was one of the biggest rocks in the room.

Thank you Mr. Expert! I hope to see you again soon.

[Al Schoonmaker]

Thanks for a great story.
Al

[Mike Gallo]

Great post.

[bigpooch]

Excellent way to take advantage of your "image"!