He had the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.
We drew to a pair of deuces and filled.
It's always pretty cool to hit a card on the river, especially when you're lucky enough to do it two days in a row. But good fortune doesn't last forever.
One pair rarely wins an Omaha pot, even if that pair is aces. In Hold'em, on the other hand, a pair of aces is right around the average winning hand.
The danger of paired flops is directly related to how high the pair is: there's less risk in a flop like 2-2-7 than Q-Q-8. Why? Because most players will fold a hand that contains a deuce but will play hands that contain a queen like A-Q, K-Q, Q-J, or Q-10.
If you look at poker as a sport like baseball, then I'd be maybe a minor league or high school ballplayer. But I play with T-ballers.
Internet players have successfully addressed the all-in play from a mathematical perspective. For example, it's fairly common to see a net player move all-in over the top from the big blind with a hand like K-Q when they have less than twenty big blinds remaining. And for good reason - it works!
In golf, no one learns to hit a draw, a fade, or a cut shot until they've been taught how to hit the ball straight. Similarly, novice poker players need to learn how to 'hit it straight' before taking on more difficult concepts.
I held four clean aces. I had youth, almost a decade of hard-core bar band experience, a good group of homegrown musicians who were attuned to my performance style and a story to tell.
