You just gots to love the fishies. In a $25 no-limit I get dealt KK in the big blind. UTG player raises the 25¢ blind to 50¢, an action which really gets on my nerves whenever I see it. Who the hell folds to a minimum raise? Why bother? Anyway, after he is called all the way around the table (well, maybe one or two people folded), I raise it to $2. UTG and one other player call and we see a flop, which is my worst nightmare, because it has an A. Being first to act, I decide to lead out betting. I bet roughly half the pot, $3, and both of them take forever making up their minds. In fact, after the first one called, I got distracted and, when I came back, assumed the other one folded. The turn is a blank, and I make a weak $4 bet, even though I knew I should bet much stronger. First guy calls, and then I see that the second one hadn't folded either, and he also calls. Holy crap! I figure I'm in deep doodoo at this point. I had been thinking that maybe UTG had a smaller pocket pair, but with two people calling $9, surely to god one of them has a weak A, at the very least. The river is dealt and is most certainly not a K, so I figure I have no choice but to give up the hand. I'm thinking I've probably been slow-played the entire way by AA. I check, and I'm ready to fold to any strong bet. Surprisingly, both players check behind me. Even more surprisingly, the pot is pushed to me after I turn up my pocket kings. I'm happy, of course, but I'm even more puzzled. What the hell were they calling with? They both mucked their hands, so I call up the hand history to see (Poker Room is cool that way). Turns out one of them had a Q-10 and the other had a 10-7 (there was a 10 on the flop). As Iggy is wont to say, "Oh, the humanity ..." Just a few hands later I look down and see KK again. This time I'm UTG+1 and UTG has already folded. I make the bet $1 (4xBB) hoping to get one or two callers and no A on the flop. I can't help but laugh when the next four players behind me flat call my dollar in rapid succession, as if they had their auto-call buttons checked. Then the player directly across the table from me makes the bet $5. Everyone folds to me, and then I face a decision. I'm definitely staying in to the see the flop, but I don't have much of a read on this person, other than he's played pretty solid (he's up $15). I'm a little worried about being out of position and the prospect of running up against AA in this spot, so I elect to just call. Inexplicably, so does the guy behind me, but everyone else folds and we're down to three going into the flop. The flop comes 10-high with two hearts, much to my relief. I check, as does the guy behind me. As I wait for our raiser to act, I decide that if he makes a strong bet, he definitely has a high pocket pair, which I'm already 99 percent certain of, and is trying to chase off any flush draws. He does as predicted and moves all-in for a $35 bet. I have $36 and change. I am truly terrified of AA now. But something doesn't quite ring right with this bet. Had he bet half his stack, I would think definitely AA. But since he went all-in, I'm thinking he wants to chase off more than just the flush draw. He wants the hand over with immediately. I also have to rule out him flopping a set, because if he had a pocket pair of 10s or lower, he most likely would have called my initial raise and hoped for a friendly flop, rather than reraising. I'm fairly certain I have this hand locked up, even though the size of the bet really has me worried, so I call. He had JJ. I dragged an $82 pot. In a quarter game. The cards have truly been running good for me the last few days. Last night I sat down and played for 90 minutes, which is about my usual between TV and bed. In that hour-and-a-half, I managed to catch AA three times (and won all three!), pocket pairs higher than anything on the board three times, and flopped sets with 33 and 77. And then there was this one funny encounter when I ran into a guy who pushed all-in with A5 when I was holding AQ. Afterwards, he typed, "Lucky bitch," into the chat box. That kind of burned me up a little. I'm not one who makes a habit of tapping the aquarium, but I've grown weary of taking crap off of people, especially when they fault me for being the beneficiary of their stupidity. So I had to reply, "Yes, I was lucky I was born smart enough not to push all-in with A5." His reply was priceless: "They were suited, dumbass!" I said nothing more and prayed he took my silence as validation of his play.

Source: Trials of a Poker Apprentice