I very carefully took another trip to Caesars Indiana recently; carefully, that is, because I’d been running a little bad. The Midwestern Poker Open was in town, and I figured it might be a good opportunity to get my ship turned around. Of course, that’s probably what the Skipper thought right before he got marooned on Gilligan’s Island for 20 years. But then, for what it's worth, he also got to spend 20 years with a sexy movie star, so there's always some good in making bad decisions.

Anyhow, no sooner did I sink into my favorite seat than I picked up pocket kings. It was only a $1/$2 NL game. So when the guy in front of me - and under the gun - suddenly made it $15, I re-raised to $40. All folded and he called. The flop came K-6-4 rainbow, and I thought to myself, “Cinch, you are one badass Texas Hold'em player. You've got a duke, bro!”

Now, I ask you: Do you think I had the best hand on the flop? “I would hope so…” everyone I’ve already told the story to has coyly said. It looked so beautiful it felt suspicious. I bet $40, and he called.

The turn came an ace, and he checked. I bet $60 and he raised $200-something - all-in. I ask you again: Do you think I had the best hand? Because as far as I was concerned my duke was cashing!

Unfortunately, though, the guy had made a beautiful smooth call before the flop with pocket aces – and the deck did the rest. So I was all-out. The small blind spoke up after the hand with, “I had an ace.” And all I could think was, “Gee, thanks for the help.”

But no big deal. It had happened kind of strangely, with me flopping the king and all, heads-up against a sandbagging pair of aces and pulling a one-outer on the turn. So, basically, as soon as the cooler was dealt - make that as soon as it was shuffled - I was toast. Kings against aces, unless you really, really know your opponent, is felt time.

I sat through a few hours of card death. Then a $10/$20 Omaha/8 full-kill game started, and I moved over to it. The lineup consisted of washed-up bartenders, half-assed bookies, local anglers (no, not the fisherman type), road men, retiree rocks, and wise guy professionals – all the usual suspects. Little did I know there'd be a “case ace on the turn” lying in wait for me every hand I played.

Immediately upon sitting I flopped the nut full, heads-up, and my opponent catches aces-full on the turn. And get this: An ace had been exposed during the hand as a burn card! Then, to make matters worse, I counterfeited the nut low - or low draw - five times in a row only to have an ace come on the turn every time. And, after that, somebody made an ace-high straight on the turn against my top set to sweep me.

I seriously thought one guy could only be so unlucky before something had to give. And that’s where I was wrong. I finished out my depressing run with the nut low draw and nut full to my A-2-4-4 (flop 3-3-4) when the case ace again came on the turn and all three of my opponents chopped me up with two wheels and aces full. I mean, really, it was more than absurd. It was eerie!

At that point I “objected.” I pointed out that the three tightest players in the game were all drawing at the case ace, and when it came they all split up my double-nut hand like they were expecting it. That’s not an everyday scenario. Hell, that’s not an every-decade scenario.

The whole session I kept saying, “Case ace on the turn, please,” before they even turned it off – and there it came; in every single hand, it was an ace on the turn, often the case ace, and it plundered my stack like a fat kid in a whole cake factory. We were at a double-deck automatic shuffle table, so I asked one of my favorite dealers (a real sweetie pie named Amber) why the 46th card in both decks was always an ace.

“Sometimes we’re only nine-handed and it’s the 42nd card,” she quipped.

If I'd said something smart like that in my dealing days they’d have docked me a year’s pay! But Amber don’t care. She’s cold-blooded as a crocodile and twice as dangerous. She wears these nerdy, coke-bottle glasses in the box to try to fend off all the inevitable advances. Truth be told, though, they do more to keep Caesar’s wannabe playboys safe from her!

But it wasn’t just Amber turning those case aces on ‘ole Cinch. One dealer after another, they all cut me down in turn. I could almost hear them in the break room laughing it up: “Yeah, I busted out Cinch with the case ace too. It’s a blast seeing him go on tilt.”

The only problem is Cinch-on-tilt just ain’t good for the game. You should’ve heard the bitchfest that ensued. I laid into every single one of them about how they were rewriting the whole book on statistics. I mean, what are the odds that every 46th card in the deck is an ace? One-in-13, it should be – a generic 8 percent. But in this case it was more like 92 percent; either I’d run into the worst luck ever, or someone was playing one hell of a mean joke!

Still, none of the hands really bothered me as much as the one in which the three rocks were all drawing at the case ace on the turn. None of them had an out except the ace against one of the biggest Omaha hands I’d had in a year – the nut full and nut-low draw. It royally burned my ass to have to give it away on that one, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. All I could do really was head home to work on some more theories about why this stuff happens. The case-ace-on-the-turn streak I had on that trip is a prime example of voodoo, and if there’s one thing that science is good for it’s to outrun voodoo. If I’m not the man for that job, sports fans, I’ll eat my whole hat collection. Stay tuned….

By: Dave Cinch
dave.cinch@acehoyle.com

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