Cappelletti in Tunica

The week after Labor Day, I attended a big regional bridge tournament in Tunica, Mississippi, which is only about a half-hour from the Memphis airport. As I drove my rental car south on Route 61, the first big casino I came to was the Grand, where I stopped and checked in. I got the poker room rate, which was less expensive than the bridge tournament rate for a very nice room.

Geographically, it seems to me that Tunica consists of several large "shopping mall" clusters of casinos. The bridge tournament was being held at Sam's Town, which is next to Harrah's. Several miles away in another cluster were the Horseshoe, the huge Gold Strike, and the Sheraton.

Each night after the evening session of bridge, hundreds of bridge players gravitated to the casinos. I played poker mainly at the Grand Casino and the Horseshoe. The Grand's 15-table poker room has mostly $4-$8 hold'em, occasional $10-$20 hold'em, and no-limit hold'em on weekends. The Horseshoe has hold'em at many levels as well as Omaha high-low, and sometimes has a particularly wonderful $500 buy-in pot-limit Omaha high game on weekends. In my opinion, pot-limit Omaha high is one of the forms of poker that requires the most skill.

I did manage to slip away from bridge for one of the bigger weekly poker tournaments, the Friday night $120 buy-in (with one $50 rebuy) no-limit hold'em tournament at the Grand, which attracted about 100 players.

After about a half-hour of play, I used up my rebuy option when I managed to lure an A-Q all in against my A-K – but he outdrew me. Over the next hour, I built my rebuy up to about $8,000, when the following interesting situation occurred:

With the blinds at $100-$200 and one limper from third position, I picked up the A Q. I made it $500 to go before the flop – a typical "screening raise" that narrowed the action to the big blind, the player in third position, and me. The flop brought the A and two black fours.

The big blind checked, but the rather loose player in third position, who had about $6,000 in chips, led with a $1,000 bet. What would you do with my hand?

Unless he had a very unlikely 4 or pocket fours, I thought I had him beat. From watching his earlier play, he was very unlikely to have an A-K, because he probably would have raised before the flop or reraised my raise. He could not have an A-4 suited, because I was looking at two black fours and two red aces. And not many players call with an A-4 offsuit from early position.

I thought his most likely hand was something like A-J or A-10. Since I probably had him beat, I simply wanted to raise him out now, since he might get lucky and outdraw me on one of the next two cards, or force him to make a bad call. So, I raised $4,000, most of his remaining chips. He called and reraised his last $1,000 all in. Of course, I called. Unfortunately, he had A-4 offsuit (!), and I lost about three-fourths of my chips. Was I unlucky, or did I misjudge the situation?

Omaha Problem: Holding J-5-J-3 double-suited, would you call into fiveway unraised action in a loose Omaha high-low game? My opinion will appear in the next issue.