What Would You Do?

Playing 3-300 spread game today at the Carribean Casino in Kirkland, I got stacked 3 times.  My question is, "What would you do in these situations?".
 
1st scenario:  An early position player raises to $18 with about $140 behind.  I have Q/Q in late position.  At least one player has called, I call, and two others call.  The flop is J/x/x with two of a suit but unconnected, the jack is the highest card.  The player shoves.  I tank for a while pondering his hand range.  What kind of a hand shoves here?  AK is possible as well as A/J flopping top pair top kicker and not wanting any more action.  The whole range of small pairs comes to mind, shoving to avoid the overcards.  I finally call.  A king hits the turn and I figure I am dead.  He turns over A/A.  Could I have avoided this by re-raising pre-flop then folding to a shove?  Doubtful.  I decided that it was just a cold deck kind of thing as only 2 hands were ahead of me pre-flop.

2nd Scenario:  I have A/K in early position.  I raise to $25.  A player or two calls and the button re-raises to $75.  I suspect larceny, but with only about $125 behind, I shove.  The other players fold, he calls and the board runs out with small cards.  He has Q/Q, and I am stacked again.

3rd Scenario:  I have K/10 in the cutoff in a multi-way pot that has been raised by a very activmee player to my immediate left on the button.  He has been very lucky and aggressive, straddling every opportunity and hitting a piece of every flop.  The flop comes K/9/5.  It is checked to me and I bet the pot, around $40.  He calls, the other players fold.  The turn card is a 6, I shove around $125, and he says, "sorry, I sucked out on you".  He has 7/8 for the gutshot straight.  I thought his call on the flop was horrible, particularly since there were other players who could possible be trapping with a better king.  Very bad odds for a gutshot 4 outer.

Bonus Scenario:  You have Q/3 diamonds (big blind) in an unraised board of X/x/4, 2 of your diamonds on the flop.  An aggressive young player in the small blind bets $50.  What do you do?

In this case, I shove around $125 and he calls.  There is another 4 on the turn, I hit the ace of diamonds on the river.  He has 4/6 for trip 4's and I stack him.

Overall, a very bad session for me, stuck $400.  With a little luck either with my queens or against them it would have been a different story.  The aggressive player rebought a couple of times, but probably only lost a hundred or two.  My bad on seat choice as we both sat down at the same time but I chose first.  I would have liked to have been downwind of his raises.  I chose that seat based on sitting next to the aggressive kid as I didn't want him to be on the button vs. my big blind.  He was stuck worse than me when I left due to some bad beats.  

Korea Paranoia

Sometime during my brief stint in Korea, I developed a mild case of paranoia.  I was convinced that either one of my fellow soldiers were going to hurt me, or I would be killed in some freak accident. Let me explain why.  While I was there, one of the guys in our 200 man company was killed when he parachuted into the Yangtze River and drowned.  Then, a guy was hit by a "Kimchi Cab" and ended up with a plate in his head.  The real shocker was the day one of our officers asked if any of us wanted to ride "crew" with him in a helicopter flying over to the coast.  I had never been on one before so I volunteered.  It was a real thrill, shooting straight up and hovering then zooming off.  A few hours later we returned.  Wow.  What a lot of fun, plus an authorized day out of work at the office!!!!  The very next day, he again asked us.  I had a bunch of work reports to do so no more fun for me.  Another officer went with him.  The next day, a flatbed truck brought back what was left of the helicopter.  The pilot had crashed into a mountain, killing both of them.

October 08, 1970

WO1 Frank Lloyd Mathias Capt. Kenneth Maurice Cox

Their aircraft crashed and exploded near Chuncheon while on a routine administrative flight from K-16 to Camp Page.

The last incident involved another office guy.  He asked me to stop by his barracks one evening.  I did so, and sitting on a bunk across from him he produced a knife, then asked me if I had stolen his camera.  I of course denied it and suggested that one of the Korean houseboys was probably the culprit.  I left uncut, but it added to my paranoia.  Since I was required to carry a sidearm when on my occasional secret document transfers, I approached the armorer, a buddy of mine and asked if I could just keep the pistol rather than turning it in after use.  He agreed, so I did, even sleeping with it.  I was once asked by the Commanding Officer wearing the shoulder holster in the office, and I mumbled something about carrying the documents. He accepted my answer.  A follow up on the camera guy, when I left Korea he was in charge of the company safe which I had put most of my money in.  I had no proof, but am very sure that it was not the amount I had "deposited".  There was no paperwork nor any way to prove he had taken it.  He probably figured that it was rightfully his.  Stupid not to just spend my money like the rest of the outfit.

High Hand Hosing

Some days the Omaha high hands are easy peasy. Sometimes they are won with very weak full houses.  Sunday I had the high hand of 99955 until seconds before the cutoff time (every half hour) when I was beaten with 25 seconds left by AAA22.  If that was not enough for the player, almost immediately he hit quad jacks for back to back high hands.

Today, I posted quad 8's which looked very good to win high hand.  The player to my left then hit quad queens.  Ouch.  He then lost to another player on our table who got runner runner for a 3 gap 7 high straight flush (he was playing a 3/7 suited).  He didn't even realize what he had as he check called a bet on the river.

Then, I hit an 8 high straight flush with maybe 15 minutes left.  I was playing a 5/6 suited with a 3/4 flop in diamonds.  I hit the 7 on the turn and an 8 on the river, unbelievably, a player at our table made a gutshot 9 high straight flush a few hands later.  What the what?  My hand was the best posted in over 4 hours of play!  He was sitting pretty, waiting to cash in when from another table, the dealer called out "Royal Flush".  Unfreakingbelievable!!!  Either of our hands would have been good for the money during any other half hour period.  Sadly, I really needed the money to break even.  It was not a good day for me  

The Rapid Rise of Roscoe in Korea

A quick story about some fun with the military system.  There was a very lame soldier assigned to our company named Roscoe Freed.  As befitting his name, he was red headed with buck teeth and probably met the very minimum standards for I.Q.  Amazingly, despite having been in the army for at least 9 months, he was still a buck private E2, the second lowest rank.  It was almost impossible not to at least achieved higher rank, as it is an automatic thing for time in grade, so when Fillback and I noticed this we decided to take action.  We initiated paperwork for immediate promotion to private first class.  Since this was long overdue it passed immediately.  This was done on no recommendation from any of his superiors.  We were pleased to have righted this egregious wrong.

As we thought more about it, we became incensed that he had gotten screwed for so long so decided to make up for it by putting in a special request for another promotion.  As I recall we wrote up some garbage about his dedication to duty, extreme skills, etc.  This did not go down quite as easily as he had barely sewn the new stripes on his shirts.  We were questioned by the top sergeant and the captain.  We stuck with our story (apparently they did not interview the guys working with him), also pointing out how he had been overlooked before.  Shortly we were pleased to inform private Freed that he had been promoted to Spec 4 rank (Army equivalent to corporal).  We joked about this calling it the "Rapid Rise of Roscoe".  The guys in his squad were not amused, as it had taken them longer for the promotion and they really didn't like the guy.  I can only conjecture that given his meteoric rise, he continued his Army career, retiring as a full colonel or perhaps brigadier general after 30 years.  He is probably the guy responsible for much of our Mid East policy.  I still count this as my brightest military achievement.

As a p.s, I did some fact checking with Sgt. Fillback, who lives in Vancouver, Washington, and he failed to add to the story due to being old and memory deficient.  He thought perhaps we had taken him all the way from E1 and was unsure who initiated the action, but believed I had the lead on this one.  Fillback is still a very funny guy and a good writer.  We had tons of fun writing fake memos and dropping them on each other's desks.  We have only gotten together twice since Korea, the first time when we moved to Seattle, stopping by in South Dakota and again a few years ago in Portland.  

Military Overseas

Having escaped the orders to Vietnam it was a short lived reprieve.  The next month's levy came out and there it was, my new destination.  Korea.  I was assigned to report to 8th Army headquarters in Seoul 30 days hence.  We packed our stuff and drove back to Missouri for my 30 day annual leave.  Funny side story about the trip, Amy was a little over a year old toddler.  We made the mistake of putting coca cola in her bottle along with a sedative prescribed by the doctor.  The coke was a stimulant and she never slept and would giggle and roll around.  Fun trip.

I arrived in Seoul and amazingly bumped into Gene Reed,  fraternity brother from MU who had been there for several months.   I unfortunately was a day late in joining his unit (Army "intelligence"), and was instead assigned to the 55th aviation company in "yong dong po ku" on Yoido Island just outside Seoul.  Arriving on a weekend night was given a bunk of someone on leave for the night.  Unfortunately, also not given any mosquito netting and was eaten alive until the bunk owner returned sometime in the early morning hours.  Nice start to my stay.  I was then properly assigned to one of the many metal quonset huts in our compound. Adequate but hot in summer, they were miserable places heated by oil stoves which were totally inadequate for the brutal subzero winter.  They were fifty yards from the showers which were unheated and seemingly always out of hot water.  Morning ritual was wrapping in a towel and running over and back rather than undressing and redressing there which prolonged the misery.  The only warm spots on the base were the office, mess hall, and NCO club. 

My office job involved typing boring reports all day.  To break the monotony another clerk, Jim Fillback and I would type bogus funny official looking documents and casually lay them on each other's desks.  Good times.  Other fun stuff was trips into Seoul in the big deuce and a half, 2 1/2 ton truck to you non vets.  Crazy traffic and a game was driving past signs and hitting them with the big side view mirrors.  Sometime during my tour I gained a couple of additional tasks, secret document courier, duty roster clerk, and mail clerk.  The document courier job meant I got to check out a handgun.  More about this later.  Duty roster clerk was high pressure as guys would ask for days off duty and would ambush you.  Also, it meant that I could show favoritism and not schedule myself for duty.  This was later brought to the attention of Sgt Hodges, the alcoholic top Sgt. who made me schedule myself for Christmas guard duty. Karma.

One document courier trip stands out in my memory.  We were driving the jeep through the countryside past small villages.  An old, very poor, very dirty woman stared at us.  We stared back.  On the return trip we passed her again.  Wham, a big rock hit our jeep.  Screeching to a halt, I pulled my revolver from the shoulder holster.  She started yelling unintelligbly at us in Korean.  We just drove off.  It was the only time I ever drew a weapon.

Coming up in next installment, more about the service revolver, paranoia, and why I don't want to fly in a helicopter again.