Social integration

"Anybody who says society self-segregates has never been to this place." That was T a couple hours into her first (and maybe last) trip to one of Charlotte's finest underground gaming establishments. She and BG (no, not that BG) had joined me in a journey to the dark side, the weekly $40 rebuy tourney. I lasted to the final table on the back of two massive suckouts (runner-runner quads and runner-runner flush) before my AsKs ran into QQ and I lost the coinflip.

But as T looked around a cash game table that included three gypsies (yes, real gypsies), a dealer from Palace Station (yes, a Vegas dealer hanging out in NC - sick mom), a computer goof from some little startup in Washington state, a Carolina Panther, a very pleasant guy named Rico who I have no doubt could make me disappear without a trace and a couple of random hillibillies and determined that the Great American Melting Pot is the poker table. The English-only rule is a myth, as the ten gypsies running around the room will attest to, but they'll teach you Gypsy if you play with them long enough. Nobody really talks about their real life, but they'll talk about their golf bets of the day. Nobody talks about what they do for a living, but they'll happily show you pictures of their kids.

It's a fun game, but it can get expensive. A miracle occured this trip, though. I watched pocket Aces hold up 4 out of 5 times, and the time they got cracked, the guy who had them admitted that he limped with them to try to play a big pot and got killed for it. I had them three times in 4 hours, and still managed to drop half a buy-in. I got paid off a little each time, but really wasn't involved in too many big pots. Rico made the most interesting defense of his hand I've ever seen at a table, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this move.

I'm in middle position in a loose 1/2 NL game. There's a raise to $10 in front of me and I look down at AsKs. I only want to play against other legitimate hands here, so I pop it another $50 on top. I figure I'll get probably two callers. Rico pushes all in for $165, and flips up his biracial Aces. Now this is legal in this game, so his hand is live. Everybody looks at him like he's crazy, but we all fold. He runs out KQ, AK and QQ, and he protects his hand against the case Queen which would have hit on the river. Now Toyota Todd was itching to call with his KQ, and the QQ and I were almost certainly going to call the other $100, so he saved me the rest of my stack as well, but it was a pretty unorthodox move, if effective. His statement later was that Aces weren't good against four other random hands, and he was correct.

What do you think of this move?