makes you wonder

we play a home game every few weeks, not big money, just enough to keep it friendly but make it interesting

last week one of the regulars brings along his brother, says 'he hasnt played before but would like a game'

anyway, we run through the rules, play a couple of dummy hands and ask the newcomer if he's ok with everything

after about an hour the newcomer is totally relaxed, has taken chips off everyone and doubled his buy-in with some pretty aggressive raising of the pot

holding top pair i decided it was time to call him down, he announces a straight and starts to pull in the chips

i look, but can't see the straight

'where's the straight?' i ask

he pushes forward three consecutive cards

'you need five cards to make a straight' i say

'oh' he says

'please tell me all those hands we folded to you wern't to three card straights' i say

'nah' he says, thinks about it 'most of them were flushes'

we laughed

I used to have a regular home game at my house and we always played "cards speak" and never used the declared value of the hand. I do however see the humor in this one as I've seen just about everything at the tables. I was on Superior poker checking out their 3 card guts game (grew up playing this) and found out they count straights and flushes and not just high card, pairs and trips...

Are you sure that wasn't my mother-n-law you were playing with? We were playing a friendly little game on our family vacation. We laid out all the particulars for her, even had people that weren't in the hand help her out, and she still made crazy raises, calls with nothing. Thought she had a flush with four cards...felt bad taking her money at first, but after awhile...well...too bad! LOL

Whenever I play, announced hands don't mean anything, the cards MUST be shown in order to rake in a pot.

A similar situation happened to me. In a tournament, I was up against, let's call her Kim. The board read Q, J, 8, 7, 2. Kim puts me all-in. I have top pair and the smallest stack, so I call. She says "I have the straight," shows 9, J and starts reaching for the pot. I look at it and say "No, you don't." She asks "What do you mean?" I say "You're missing a 10." She looks for a minute, confused. Finally, I had to spell it out for her. She finally realizes it and I showed my Queens to take the pot. If I didn't look, she would have gotten a pot that was mine. Always make sure the player has what player ssays he/she has.

I always assumed people would show their cards if called. I'd want to see what took me out (if it did) in order to figure out where I went wrong in the hand.