AAAAAA!

Just got back from a game of Texas hold 'em. After a few hours of play, in the wee hours of the night, we called last round with three players left in the game.

I was first to deal, Aidan to my right, Daniel to his right. First hand of this final round, I go up against Aidan, and it turns out that he had started with a pair of aces in the pocket, and ended up with triples.

Note for those unfamiliar with the game: in Texas hold 'em you start out by dealing two cards to each player, face down: this is the player's "hole" or "pocket". Further cards are then dealt face up as "community cards", and the players build hands out of the community cards combined with their respective pocket cards. On any given hand, you have about a 0.45% chance of starting out with two pocket aces, which is a rather substantial advantage.

So, Aidan was very lucky on that hand.

Second hand of this final round, Aidan goes up against Daniel. Daniel bets everything he has left, and Aidan calls with (I think) a pair of kings, leaving Daniel with very few ways of coming out on top. One of those ways was to have pocket aces--which he had.

Daniel was very lucky on that hand.

These pairs of aces were clearly migrating clockwise across the table, meaning that I was next up. As the last hand of cards was being dealt, I start cracking my knuckles and bragging about how I was going to play my aces so well as to be sublime.

For pocket aces to hit three people in a row, one after the other, is such a monumentally improbable coincidence that I feel I have a decent excuse for why (as I must admit) I did not play as well as I'd predicted, when I looked down at my pocket cards and indeed discovered that I was the third player, in a row, in that final round of the night, to get pocket aces.

Creepy.