Poker Unclogged

Do you ever become irritated playing a NL cash game when a big stack makes a raise that puts you all-in?

You are seated a table with a max $200 buy-in. You've played for an hour and you have made steady progress, amassing a respectable $320. You have landed AK and the flop has hit the ace. You bet the pot, let's say it is 40. A guy behind you, who flat called pre-flop, pushes you all-in.

It's a tough call.

You have TP, TK, but you have only committed say, $60, and would still be ahead for the session, by an amount that is acceptable for an hour's play.

It is annoying, isn't? It is the type of moment that you find yourself wishing the pre-flop caller was poker protozoa and you could call, secure that the worst that could happen was a minor dent in your dough.

However, count yourself lucky that you at least have the option of calling. It could be a lot worse.
Consider this tale from poker's Wild West heyday.

John Dougherty was one of the most famous gamblers in Tombstone: given the place was a hive of scum and villainy, that was no mean feat. Although he packed a couple of shooters, he was known as a guy who could miss fish in a barrel. He had to get by on the huge stakes he would play for and the smallness of his feet. Some might think that the size of his bets were a compensatory tool for the size of his anatomy. We'll never know. Had Freud been born in Tombstone, it is unlikely he would have asked more than one punter about his mother.

Anyway, Dougherty's bankroll was around $100,000 and he only played no-limit games for high stakes – he would tip-toe away if the other players were small-fry. His reputation grew and in 1889, Dougherty he played Ike Johnson, the cattle king of Colorado, for the poker championship of the West.

They sat down in Santa Fe, and were surrounded by poker rubber-neckers, including L Bradford Price, the Governor of New Mexico. The players wasted no time slugging at each other and both appeared to snare a monster in one of the first hands. After a few minutes of betting, the pot stood at $100,000.

Jackson was floundering. After a while, he wrote a deed to his ranch and 10,000 head of cattle, valued at a further $100,000, and herded the value into the middle.

Dougherty was now short of dough. He picked up the pen Johnson had used and wrote out a deed himself, handed it to the Governor and drew his gun. According to Herbert Asbury in Sucker's Progress:An Informal History of Gambling, he then said:

'Now, Governor, you sign this or I will kill you. I like you and would fight for you but I love my reputation as a poker player better than I do you or anything else.'

A sweaty Governor Price decided he'd rather flourish a pen then stare down a barrel and signed it unread. Dougherty lashed it on the table and announced that he was raising Johnson the Territory of New Mexico.

'All right,' an outraged Johnson replied, 'take the pot. But it a damned good thing for you that the Governor of Texas isn't here!