Memoirs of a Poker Player

One of the more interesting stories that I remember took place in a horse barn on a ranch in West Texas. The time was around midnight. The game was no-limit poker with a $300 minimum buy-in. Several players had lost their stacks and had made multiple buy-ins. There was almost $5,000 on the table. The hand was seven-card stud with nothing wild. One of the players had caught four Kings early on and had been raising steadily. The game was loose and the beer had been flowing freely. The pot had gotten very large. During the final round of betting, the next dealer, Clint, on the other side of the table, who was out of this pot, had already started picking up the discards, but nobody noticed except me, because the action was getting very exciting. The "four-Kings" player went all-in with his entire stack and had two callers which established a humungus pot! The all-in better reached down to turn over his hand and --------------------------------- There weren’t any cards there. His hand had accidentally been picked up and mixed into the discards!!!