A key pot occurred when we were three-handed.
Dale was on the button with the ace-six, and raised it up to ¢55. Lee was down a little and I thought he might have been steaming a little bit when he reraised to $1.50. I thought about the kinds of hand he might have for a second and looked at my hole cards. They were the ace and the jack of clubs.
Normally, This hand doesn't really play for a raise, but I figured that it might be worth a call, for a few reasons. First, I believed it was more likely than normal that Lee was getting out of line in this pot (a total misread on my part, as I'll discuss later), not only because he might be steaming but also because I know he doesn't respect Dale's raises, and might very well be raising to isolate him in the pot. Since the stacks were fairly deep (I had around $30 or so at that point) I thought I might win a fairly big pot if I hit the flop. Still, this was definitely at the low end of the range of hands I would have called with in that spot. I made the call, and so did Dale, which let me know a couple of things about his hand. First, I wasn't looking at a big pair. Second, Dale might be getting all-in in this pot since it contained $3.50 and he was sitting on about $11.35 more. The pot was equivalent to almost a third of his chips, and there was likely to be action since his bet had been reraised and three players were taking the flop. It came ace of spades, queen of spades, and a small red card. Lee, who was first to act, checked it to me. I needed to determine where I stood in the hand with my top pair, second kicker, and decided to bet. I decided to bet about the size of the pot, $3.75. Dale thought for a while, and then went all-in. Lee folded. At this point, I had what I believed to be a pretty tough decision, and so I decided to take some time to think about it. What bothered me most about this situation was that I didn't think Dale had shown too much strength before the flop. He had been the initial raiser, but after a reraise and a call back to him, with a fairly large pot relative to his stack, he elected to just call rather than raise. This led me to doubt sincerely that he had ace-king. Also, I thought it was unlikely but not impossible that he had the AQ as well. I was somewhat worried he might have the pocket eights, but I eventually decided it looked like either a bluff-raise with a good flush or flush/straight draw, or an ace with a lower kicker. I figured I probably rated pretty well against that range, but wanted to be certain of my pot odds in this situation. The raise was $7.50 more to me, and there was $11 in there already, giving me almost 2½ to 1 odds to call. If I called and lost, I would have had somewhere around $19 left, but I decided it was too good an opportunity to pass up, and I made the call. The board came out running low spades, but since neither of us had a spade, the fact that none of them was a six was good enough.
Lee later showed his mucked cards - two black kings. Not only was he in fact reraising a completely strong hand, contrary to my initial read, but he had been horribly outflopped by both of his opponents. Incidentally, I love the check on the flop here, and his decision to wait until we acted and then react. In fact, he was right to think that one (or both) of us might have the ace given the preflop action. After the pot-sized bet and the all-in raise, the fold was clear.
Unfortunately, he would have made the best possible hand on the last card by catching two consecutive spades and making a flush.
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