A Strange Slowroll

So last Friday, I played in a tournament at my neighborhood casino. They offer extra chips if you sign up at least an hour before the tournament starts which I always take advantage of. Typically that leads to me having some time to kill and more often than not that means grabbing a seat at a 2-4 LHE table for a bit. Now 2-4 LHE is not a money making venture, it's strictly for entertainment purposes. Fortunately, there are typically frequent sources of entertainment at the average 2-4 table. One such source was present the other night.

In this situation, the entertainer was either UTG or in the big blind. Four or five players saw the flop. The flop came with a 3 low and two hearts. Entertainer bets, everyone calls. Turn brings the third heart. Entertainer bets, one call, the button player raises. Both players call. The river is a second 3. Entertainer bets, and gets two calls. The entertainer makes a little speech something like, "well, let's see what we have here" and turns over one card, the three of hearts. He then just stands there and the other two players do nothing. Maybe 10 or 15 seconds go by and the dealer says something like "I need to see two cards for you to win." Entertainer then slowly turns over the 8 of hearts for a small flush, everyone else mucks their cards.

One thing I've been trying to do is get a little more chatty at the table. There are several reasons for this. First, I think it makes things more fun if there is chatter going back and forth. Now while my goal is to be a long term profitable poker player, this is really a hobby for me and if I'm going to invest time in a hobby then dang it I want it to be fun. In addition, I think if you're generally friendly to people at the table that can pay off in the long term. Mike Caro talks a lot about wanting to be the person at the table that people don't mind losing to. Finally, I think if you get people talking, then you'll get more information from them, and more information equals power. So yeah, I'm working on nurturing my inner Negreanu. Entertainer had just presented me with a good opportunity to do so.

I turned and looked at him and said, "you realized you just slowrolled yourself." He had kind of a puzzled look on his face but then smiled and said, "well I'm just not paying attention to what I"ve got." My response, "OK, just so long as we don't have to call security to break up an argument between you and yourself."