I knew you had a straight but I had top set

Yes the title of this blog post is the words said to me buy a young donkey at my table. Why did he utter those words? Well because he scooped almost a $300 pot. Let's rewind to the beginning of the hand. I was in BB with A3. There are 5 limper's ahead of me. Flop comes 542 and sb leads out for $8. I make it $16 with my flopped straight. UTG makes it $24 and cutoff makes it $32. SB folds and I call $16 more with 2nd nuts. I was pretty sure neither of them had 63. Turn is a 10 and I lead out for $16. UTG makes it $32 and cutoff calls and I just call hoping for a non-paired river. Of course the river is a 10 and I check, UTG bets and cutoff raises, I show the sb and state you believe this and fold and cutoff blurts out of course you had the straight. UTG then proceeds to raise and cutoff just calls. UTG pockets 5's and cutoff pocket 4's. A few minutes later I ask the donkey kid who won, what did you put me on the turn when I led out. He goes I figure you had the straight but I had top set...ding ding ding, yes folks we have a live one.

Back to the beginning. I got to the casino about 9:15 and had to wait till about 10:00pm for a seat. They usually only have two 8-16 tables going but tonight it was packed and they had four games running. They finally call me and I go to my table and immediately recognize 5 of the players and was very happy to be taking a seat. I knew the aforementioned donkey who was a horrible player and one of the luckiest players you will ever see. I knew the old crotchety guy next to him. Another young kid who isn't as good as he thinks, a guy who I've heard other players refer to him as an ATM and then a very solid Asian lady who is really good and not crazy (which is rare imo for those who have played a lot of cash game poker with Asian women).

For the first 45 minutes or so I hardly played. Raised 2 hands in a row with 1010 and QQ and won with the queens. That was about it. The donkey kid was getting so lucky having built his stack to over $400 with unbelievable suck outs that led me shaking my head. I immediately set my sights on him. Over the next 30 minutes I probably took about $200 off of him alone. He then got some back in the aforementioned hand but by the time I left his $400+ stack was now down to $120.

Without going into details I left with $600 exactly for a $400 profit in less than 3 hours of work. It was a soft table and I probably should have stayed longer but I didn't want to lose any of my stack. I'll take it. My first winning session at 8-16 at that casino. I wish all tables were like that one.