"Chop it up!"

Yesterday I spent a long day playing in a league NLHE event. I won both the event and the last longer pool, netting a cool +$70. During the course of the event, there was a lot of commotion early on. One of the players was apparently hitting hand after unlikely hand. First it was quads! Then it was a royal flush! What, quads again??? Another royal??? What’s going on here? I might add that the same player had a reputation of hitting these huge hands tournament after tournament.

The immediate thing that came to my mind was malfeasance. Who gets monsters like this game after game? I’ve been playing for close to ten years now, and I’ve hit two royal flushes, and that’s probably only due to the volume I’ve put in over that time, plus no small amount of luck. It just doesn’t happen that often. “Something’s rotten in Denmark,” sez I to myself.

Later in the tournament, the same player gets moved to my table. I beat her out of a medium sized pot, but one that was crucial to my stack. She rants about it (she rivers two pair, and I hit my gutshot) and sends some pretty aggressive barbs my way. Since I was already wary of her and she’d made her intentions pretty clear: to knock me out, destroy me and otherwise hasten my demise, I decided to tread even more cautiously around pots with her.

Two hands later, I notice out of the corner of my eye she’s playing with the deck that’s getting shuffled into play. She hands it to me and says quickly, “These are ready to go.” I noticed that she was the last one to touch the cards, to shuffle presumably and to cut. I know I should have cut the cards again before dealing, but I was curious to see the outcome of the hand. Wouldn’t you know it, she gets dealt a pair, the player to her left gets a higher pair. She gets it all in with her opponent pre-flop, flops a set and… (ta-da!) turns quads. It was a shocker. Well, not really if you’re setting up the deck.

After the hand was over, she nervously puts in, “Oh, I didn’t even shuffle the cards,” as if to allay suspicion. I immediately said in the deadest way possible, “No, you were the last to touch and cut these.” She starts to fluster a bit and fortunately for her, the player to her right says, “I think I shuffled…” There was doubt in his voice, but he muddied the waters just enough that I couldn’t call her out right there. I had a choice at that moment to either let my blood boil over and make a big scene or try to ignore it enough to continue playing. To be honest, I was more than a little shocked. To have a damning event like this play out in front of you is not common to what I otherwise find to be a friendly and very well run tournament league.

To me, it was distressing that someone who had played for many years with this league would stoop so low as to cheat so flagrantly. I’m surprised no one has said anything about this as I’m sure other folks have their suspicions. Accusing someone of being a cheat is no small thing, but this is pretty much confirmed for me. At the final table, there was one more weird hand, where she “agonized” over a huge all-in bet by another player who had flopped top two (QJ). I say agonized, but I’m sure she was acting the whole time. She calls with a gut shot, AT and of course binks her K on the river for broadway. “I thought you were bluffing,” she said afterwards, “and my Ace-high was good, or I could hit an ace.” What a read! What a player! I can’t speak to the psychology of why people cheat in these situations, but I suspect poker success is a way for this woman to fill a pretty deep and dark void.

Once we got short-handed, there wasn’t any room for her to hide and her lackluster play revealed itself. I made great progress when it was down to five handed. I stole some pots, amped up the aggression, and made what turned out to be a great call with KT on a K-high board (other player had K-rag). I took great personal satisfaction in knocking her out a few hands later when my AT flops T44 and she pushes right there with 99. With her bad shove, and the prior KT call, I had a commanding chip lead and finished up the tournament pretty quickly. I think from 3-handed to finish it took less than 10 hands. The third place finisher pushed J8 and I called with A6. When it was down to heads up, my chip lead was around 18:1 and it was over within 6 hands or so when my QJ takes on A-rag with a Q on the flop and turn.

For myself, patience, awareness and experience paid off. There were plenty of opportunities to get bored and blow up, especially when the cheating became a concern. I told myself the best way to get through this was to try to win or pick up enough points to cement my position in the field that was Vegas-bound (the tournament collects buy-ins and the top players head over to play a $1000 buy-in NLHE event, with winnings split between the player and the league). With this win, I’m 2nd overall (behind the cheat, wouldn’t you know it, who sits in 1st) and I’m good for the season. There’s two events left for me to play, and my intention is to win this season. If there’s any justice, unseating the self-styled “Queen of Quads” is in my future.