When the entire table goes on tilt, Poker is fun!

[steamboatin]

I played 10-20 at Ceasar's IN last night and the game was tight and mostly short handed because players were constantly leaving to play satelite tourneys. I played reasonbly well but couldn't make a hand.

I had been down the entire time and had built back to almost even when one of my favorite maniacs stopped by to tell me he had won a grand on a dollar slot machine. I yelled "Seat Open!" and tapped the empty spot on my right. He jumped right in, posted under the gun and raised when the action got to him.

His raising and sucking out on the river put the entire table on tilt. It wasn't five minutes until every hand was capped preflop. Three hands in a row, someone stayed all the way to the river through capped flops and capped turns to catch an ace on the river. They didn't have a draw and caught an ace, they had naked weak aces. One guy was in for four bets on the turn with an unimproved AK and cracked KK when he caught an ace on the river.

My idea to get the maniac to join the game almost bacfired on me because I still couldn't make a hand. Here is how crazy it was, I am almost out of chips and get AA UTG. I raise and it is three bets back to me with seven players. I cap, three bet the Q high flop and I am all in on the turn. The turn is three bet but the river only has one bet and two callers. The bettor says, "Two Pair". I throw my aces down face up and stand up. There seemed to be some confusion about who gets the pot. I was confused because I was certain I had lost and it took a momment to realize the bettor had misread his hand and my aces were good.

Before the NIT police attack, the bettor is a good guy and no way he was shooting an angle, just an honest mistake caused by being on tilt like the rest of the table.

I made an amazing comeback, (just like Championship Wrestling) and booked a small win but that isn't the point.

I will have to look on StatKing to see how many hours I have logged playing 10-20 but this is the first time I saw the entire table go on tilt at the same time.

There was one older guy that is pretty loose and aggressive, a couple of idiot calling stations, my favorite maniac and I don't know what the rest of the players had been smoking but it was good for the game.

One of the players, I had seen before but he isn't a regular said he hasn't had a job in twenty-three years, which I understood to mean he played poker professionaly. He was tilting more than anyone.

It still suprises me how one player can make such a dramatic change in the texture of a game.

PS. Premptive strike at the stack police, yes I should have had more chips in front of me so I could have continued to jam but my stack got really short really fast