"I won't worry about it much," I said. "If he's terrified of my reputation it means he hasn't played with me before, and if I'm lucky I might be able to steal one pot from him before he realizes I have feet of clay just like everyone else."

So anyway, there we were, about a half hour into this $10-$20 game, when the dealer flipped me the Qc as my doorcard. I expected this meant I would be folding, because there aren't too many hands you can play in Eight-or-Better with the Qc as your doorcard.

(Q-Q) Qc is fine. Big straight flushes like (10c-Jc) Qc or (Jc-Kc) Qc are marginally acceptable if your hand is very live (i.e., maybe one club in sight and none of the cards you need to make a straight are out and it looks like a multiway pot is developing). There are other big card hands that are playable if you know your opposition well enough, or if it's clear enough that you'll be facing only the bring-in.

For the most part, though, once you see a paint as your doorcard in Eight-or-Better, you prepare to muck your hand unless you see two suited little cards underneath, which in this case is exactly what I saw: (5c-6c) Qc.

This is a hand with all sorts of possibilities, and better still, should you miss on fourth street, it's pretty easy to get away from your hand.

If you catch any club you're playing, a connected but nonsuited baby like the 4h lets you look at one more if your hand still looks live, and aside from catching an ace, where maybe you're playing and maybe you're not, you're done with the hand.

I caught a big club, but frowned internally when I saw two other clubs hit other players' hands (we had five players still in at this point).

Then on fifth street I caught another club to make my flush, and I went to work, ramming and jamming and putting in every raise I could make, as no one else was showing anything potentially scary.

By the time we'd reached the river, only three of us were left, and I bet in the dark, a move I rarely make, but I'd been ramming and jamming so much that anything other than a bet on the river would have looked strange and probably induced two checks behind me, and I figured my high hand was both obvious and good. I figured I'd get one or two calls, depending on who made a low and how low it was, and if it were low enough, I might even get a raise. Both opponents called.

Without even looking at the river card, which had been dealt off a bit to the side, I reached for my first two hole cards, and I announced as I was flipping them face up, "flush going in," meaning that I had a flush at least and I'd see about the low when I looked at the river card.

There was only one problem. You know how you hear about those people who spontaneously combust, or who get abducted by aliens? Well, something similar must have happened to my 5c-6c, because when I flipped the two cards up, they were the 2h-6h. That's right. Not two black clubs. Two red hearts, and one of them the wrong rank, even.

I'd have paid $500 for a videotape of what my face must have looked like when I turned those cards over.

"Oh my God," I said, my mouth so agape that I must have looked not unlike young Michael in Mary Poppins when she said "Close our mouth, Michael, we are not a codfish."

I reached for my river card, wondering whether I was suffering a flashback to some hand I'd held in the sixties, and didn't even have the strength to see what I had. The dealer arranged my cards and announced, "two pair, sixes and twos."

Remember now, I had two opponents who had EACH called on the river. They each looked at their hands, and mucked them, meaning neither had a low and neither had a high hand that could beat two tiny pair. I can only assume they were each pulling at a low and had paired and had hoped that everyone else was low, or that maybe I'd started with Q-Q and never improved (the search for rationalizations becomes pretty desperate when the pot is that large). The dealer started pushing me the entire massive pile of clay chips, and I said the most clever thing that my tiny brain could manage at the moment.

"I win the whole pot?" I asked. "Sixes and twos are a scooper?"

"Yessir," said the dealer, ask I kept blinking and wondering if I weren't in the middle of some kind of dream.

I pulled the chips in, stayed in my seat long enough to stack them (one hand that I folded pretty quickly), and announced, "I think I need some coffee," as I rose to fetch that familiar stimulant.

Now, had my hole cards turned out to have been 5s-6s, I'd have understood. That's not a good mistake, but it happens. A variation of this had happened to me about three days earlier when I thought my hole cards were the 9d-10d and turned out to be the 9d-10h.  At least then they were both the right color and the right rank.

I got my coffee and found my friend and told him the tale. "I don't think that guy is going to be terrified of playing against me anymore," I said.

"Well, there's one good thing that will come out of this," my friend said. "From now on, whenever you're in an Eight-or-Better game, you shouldn't worry too much about the game breaking, because there should be a pretty good list. I think you're on the permanent 'feet of clay' list."

"Good point," I said, "and I better tell this tale myself, rather than letting other people tell it, because even some perfectly honest people will be called liars when they tell this one."

Meanwhile, aside from establishing the possibility that anyone can have a brain freeze for a moment (and the moment had to be when I looked at my hand the very first time, because I wouldn't consider playing (6h-2h) Qc in an Eight-or-Better game), what lessons can we (and I'm including myself in that "we") learn from this hand?

First, while it certainly is preferable to develop the skill to look at your hole cards once and then remember them (how many times have you seen a hold'em player pick up his hole cards and check them when a third suited card hits the board on sixth street, in effect announcing "I’m going to see if I picked up a flush draw"), there is no shame in taking another look at your hole cards once in a while.

Many is the time I've been dealt something like As-Ks in hold'em, and when the third spade hit the board on sixth street, gone back to check hole cards of which I was completely certain, trying to create the impression that I might be drawing at a flush instead of drawing opponents into the hand (hey, if I'm going to tell you about a knuckleheaded move, I have a moral obligation to reveal at least one clever play in the same column).

Second, no matter how large a pot gets, sometimes you just have to throw your hand away on the end. Remember, I'd started this hand showing two big cards. The chances that I was firing away and re-raising into a large field with an unmade flush were pretty thin. The most an opponent should have been able to hope for was that I HAD started with two queens, hadn’t improved them, and was desperately drying to push the low draws that might make two low pair out of the hand. 

The dark bet on the end might have helped create this impression, because a dark bet usually means either great strength or great weakness. I have to assume that of my two opponents, one of them had a pair of aces and the other two even worse pair (like fours and twos).

I never got to see my opponents' hands, but I have to assume each caller had assumed I had never improved two queens and that his other opponent was low. That's a MIGHTY thin assumption, given that no one who knows how to play Eight-or-Better in a loose game was going to start with a hand like (Q-4) Q. You're trapped going in one direction and you don't have much ammo for that direction.

Yes, miracles do happen in poker. The odds that the miracle set of assumptions needed for a call on the end aren't lottery-sized, although remember that these callers were each making a $20 call for what they had to assume was half the pot (about $300, which meant they were investing $20 for a shot at $150).

When you go fishing for a miracle, ask for more than 7.5-1 odds, and if one gets bestowed upon you like the one I received, it's probably not a bad time to get up, go for coffee, and use the caffeine to make sure you're alert enough to drive home safely — immediately!