Open-Ended Straights Are My Nemesis

Tuesday night at Jokers I was rolling along the entire time. I bluffed the very first pot & just kept going from there. I was on fire. At the final table I had a good chip stack. They were paying 3 spots & when we got down to 5 we decided to pay $50 to 4th & 5th ($40 buy-in). I finally whittled my stack away to about 15 big blinds. When I was in the big blind, the first 3 guys folded & Kim Hammond limped in. I had J-10 suited & my woman's intuition told me to raise. I should always listen to it, but I sometimes don't and it screws me over every time when I don't pay attention to myself. I checked.

The flop was J-8-3 rainbow. Kim made a minimum continuation bet. My woman's intuition worked this time & I simply did not put him on a made hand. I thought he had maybe flopped a draw & I was right. I pushed all-in. He took a good 3 minutes thinking about it. He counted the chips. He had me covered but if he called he would be down to less than 2 big blinds. He called. He had 9-10 offsuit and hit his 7 for a straight right on the turn. Good God what a bad call. He says to me, "Remember that time last week when you went runner-runner for a bigger 2 pair than me? Now we're even." I was just amazed. Revenge poker? Are you kidding me? Of course, I want the call most of the time, but I thought it was just insane for him to make it considering his chip stack & the fact that he absolutely had to know I had him beat at that point. Nonetheless, I got my lousy little $50 bucks and went home.

Part 2 of Open-Ended Straights will be posted a little later.