I am now out of the hospital after an eight day stay. Still kind of weak. No diagnosis was ever made, but I was running high fevers which eventually responded to treatment (or time). I am still on meds and going to a few docs, but I'’ll be OK.

I want to thank everyone who sent well wishes, and included me in their thoughts or prayers. Everything helps. Also thanks for continuing to use the forum. I shall be back there very soon to add my thoughts to the others.

I am sure we have lost momentum on the web site, and I will try in the coming weeks as my strength grows to build that back up.

In the meantime, here is one of the long promised A-K hands. It is not much, but I found it interesting.

Background Hands rarely stand on their own in a vacuum, and this one is no exception. The player on my right, a pleasant fellow and occasional Las Visitor from Australia, was an OK player with a tendency to raise quite a bit too loosely. I tend to punish guys like like that with a blistering variety of three-bets, especially when I am in late position, and this evening was no exception. I must have already three-bet him preflop five times or more, winning almost all of them (mostly when no one else called and he folded the flop).

The hand On this hand, he raised two off the button and I of course three-bet from the cutoff with my A-K. I would have done this with a wide variety of hands, and was pleased to see that I finally had something actually three-bet worthy. It folded around to the big blind who looked annoyed, mumbled to his neighbor something like, “There he goes again,” and called, as did the player on my right.

The flop was 10-8-3 rainbow, and both players checked to me. Let me shorten this a bit by saying I normally bet against two here, and I did so this time. The big blind check-raised and the other guy folded. I called to await developments. Before I continue, please take a look and think about what the worst possible card for me would be on the turn.

Done? OK, if you said a nine, you are correct. Yes, there are other bad cards, but a nine is clearly the worst. Let’s see why.

Assuming the check-raise on the flop was not made on air, my opponent in the big blind rates to have either a pair or a draw. Let’s look at his possible draws. If he is open ended, he has J-9 or 9-7. If he has a gut shot, he has Q-J, Q-9, J-7, 9-6 or 7-6. Not all of these are equally likely of course, but that’s the list. The common quality of all of these holdings is that a nine gives him a better hand than me, even if by accident (meaning he did not make the hand he was hoping for).

OK, so the turn was a nine and he bet out. I started to fold because the nine was so bad, but his preflop mumble resounded in my head. If he thought I was making on of my many moves (as he saw it), he would play this way with far more hands than he normally would. He might even have been determined to take this one away no matter what he held.

I actually spend more time on the turn trying to convince myself to flop than I ever do. I frequently judge my actions by where I am on the scale of hands I would make the play I did with (bad syntax, sorry), and I was on the high end of my three-bet scale in this specific situation. But mostly, I could not get away from his comment. It just stuck with me. Eventually, I called the turn, and again on the river when a blank came.

I do not like called with A-K on the river, preferring to raise in case he is messing with a hand like 5-5 and might lay it down if I raise. In this case, he was way too skeptical, and would not have honored any raise I made, I thought. Si I just called.

Conclusion Since this is appearing here, you probably assume I won. OK, I did!. He showed down A-J.

I could just as easily have lost, of course, as he could have had A-10 or anything else. The successful call was very good for my credibility for the rest of the session, though.

Two more thoughts. First, had he played without comment, he certainly would have won. He gave me a reason to be suspicious and then made a suspicious play. Do not tell your neighbors what you are thinking, especially during a hand.

Second, I hope you were able to do the exercise to know that the most dangerous turn card was for that flop. You should always try to know that as you plan your play.