Beating Layne's Pocket Kings With A-6 Offsuit

In my last "Hand of the Week," I described how I threw away A-6 after the flop came A 10 6. As I wrote that column at Ted Forrest's house in Las Vegas, Layne Flack came strolling in and said, "I don't want to hear anything about how well you play A-6 anymore!" Although I feel pretty good about laying down that A-6, Layne had a good point. You see, in this year's preliminary no-limit hold'em event at the World Series of Poker (WSOP), I didn't throw away the A-6 against Layne when he had pocket kings.

We were down to three players in the $2,000 buy-in no-limit hold'em event – Layne, T.J. Cloutier, and myself – with first place paying $316,000, second place $158,000, and third place $89,000. Even though we were all about even in chips, a deal was never discussed. With the blinds at $3,000-$6,000 and the antes $1,500 a man, T.J. folded his hand on the button, and Layne opened for $20,000. I looked down at A-6 and thought for a moment. An ace high is a reraising hand lots of times, blind against blind. However, I had a feeling that Layne had a real hand this time. He had been playing very solid poker, as had T.J. and I, throughout the final table. I felt like I couldn't fold this hand, as Layne could have had K-Q suited or another equally strong hand, but I certainly couldn't reraise when I felt vibes of strength coming from him. Therefore, I decided to just call the $14,000 raise (I had $6,000 in there already) and see what the flop brought. The flop was Q 6 2, and Layne checked to me. I thought, "Hmmm, Layne checked pretty quickly here; it seems to me that this is a sign of strength. I don't want to get blown off this hand by being check-raised (you never know when an ace or a 6 is coming), so I better go ahead and check as well." The turn card was the 9, so now there was a straight draw and a flush draw. Layne again checked quickly, but this time I didn't want to check and let him make a hand with K-J or something similar, so I bet $25,000. Layne called the $25,000 and raised $50,000 (technically, he check-raised me $50,000). I thought about the night before when Layne had had more than a couple of cocktails and had made several successful big bluffs against me. I sat there for a couple of minutes trying to read him. Finally, I decided that he might have a straight draw or a flush draw, but I wasn't getting a strong read on him at this point in the hand. I didn't want him to run me over like he had done the night before, but I wasn't sure enough that he was weak to reraise him, so I just called the $50,000 and decided to see what the river card was. The last card was a 6, giving me trip sixes, and Layne announced, "I'm all in." I could see that he had about $170,000 in chips, but there was no sense in studying too long now. So, I flipped my hand faceup and said, "I call." Layne said, "Nice hand, I have pocket kings." However, he never turned his hand faceup, so T.J. and I decided that he didn't really have them.

A couple of days later, Layne was talking about the bad beat I had put on him, and I admitted that I wasn't convinced he had the pocket kings. Finally, he said, "I swear on my child that I had two kings." Layne has the most beautiful little daughter, Halie, whom he loves very much, so that settled that!

As a side note to this story, Layne and I were both staying at Ted Forrest's house during the tournament, and when Ted and I woke Layne up to go to the final table that day, we discovered that he had forgotten that he had made the final table! You see, he had had a few cocktails and … wait a minute, I guess that's another story for another time.