Important Safety Tip

Never muck the winning hand!

While this wasn't the biggest pot of the night, it was one of the most memorable for me, since I misplayed it.

The game I was in (3-100 spread limit, $100 buy-in) was mostly passive before the flop, so there were several limpers. I was in the cutoff with QJ of spades, so joined the limpfest. The button folded, so I had position, and small blind completes. Pot is now about $15.

The flop comes TT9, with one spade. Small Blind checks, Big Blind goes all-in for $28. Middle Position calls (with only about 25 more behind). I decide I want to gamble, and draw to the open-end straight draw with the backdoor flush draw. I have the big stack in the hand (over $400), so raise $50 more to isolate the short stacks. SB folds. MP calls his last 25.

Now since I often play tournament poker, I'm used to turning over the cards once everyone (or all but one) is all in. But at this table, everyone was waiting to the river to show. Since I was on the draw (I figured at least one of them had a Ten), I didn't show either. Turn and River were both blanks (like a 5 and a 2). Since I made the last aggressive move, the dealer asks me to show first, and since I missed, I just tossed the cards into the muck.

Of course, you already know my Q-high was the winning hand. Turns out the other 2 players were also on straight draws. The original raiser had 87o, and MP had J8o. So, the Jack-high ended up winning. Grr.

I was about to vow to *never* muck my hand before I see another hand that beats me, but I think it's OK to muck if I make a stone-cold bluff (with no showdown value, and no draw) and get called. Since there was no reason to want to conceal my cards this time, there's no reason to muck.

The good news is I only lost $50 this hand, and the rest of my time at the table was fairly productive. I ended up $500 for the day, even though I lost almost $200 at 6-12LHE and 4-8Stud/8 while waiting to get to the spread-limit game.