For most players, there’s a turnaround hand that launches him or her down the path of poker for life. It’s something like an epiphany where a sudden clarity of purpose, a meaning to it all, a reason for waking up, breathing and buckling your belt, lands on top of your head like a milky gob of the Pope’s cum. It often converges with the moment you learn how to riffle chips.

Anyway, I’ve been blessed/cursed with an uncanny knack for hand recall. Blessed because I don’t need to log everyone’s play at the table. Cursed because it often makes me overthink and overplay hands. But while there are dozens — if not, hundreds — of hands I can remember playing (and corresponding boards and opponents’ hole cards), there’s one hand in particular that strikes me as the one that showed I had some ability for the game — particularly, the live game.

It was within the first 4-5 months that I had learned to play seriously. I was playing 2/5 NL at the Palms in Vegas. I had patiently worked my buy-in of $200 to around $1100. A very tight player (read: a pro) was sitting to my left, under the gun. He comes in for a raise at $20. A very loose, passive tourist who was the chip leader at $1300 called. His call in turn induced another 3-4 callers (the guy was sucking out on everyone and had a huge target on his forehead). I’m in the big blind, look down at my cards and see Q-10 of hearts.

I call and the flop comes out. Ace heart, 7 heart, 2 heart. I flop the second nut.

I ignore my stiff dick and knock the table check. Pre-flop raiser bets $75 at a $125 pot. Chip leader calls. Fold. Fold. Fold. Action comes around to me, and I bump it up to $200. Pre-flop raiser hems and haws, and frustratedly mucks his hand. He mutters, “Nice raise.”

For some reason, I’m completely honest and say, “I have to protect my hand.”

He responds, “Well, you just did.”

I immediately put him on AK, with the King of hearts. The chip leader calls. Everything in my soul is telling me that I now have the stone-cold nuts, and that I should trap the chip leader.

Turn comes 6 of clubs. I check. Chip leader checks.

River comes another heart. There are four hearts out there. The sole king of hearts crushes me. The chip leader has me covered. I push all-in.

Chip leader is staring at me. His hesitation tells me that he followed me in with the non-nut draw. Someone asks for time. He’s sitting there, sweating, with a half-smile on his face like, jeez, well I’m in Vegas and I’m here to gamble. I hate my fat wife and ugly kids. Fuck it, he thinks. “Call.” He flips over Jack of hearts. 7 spade. He’s looking at me expectedly.

I flip over Q-10 hearts. Scoop up the $2200+ pot.

The table is stunned. There’s first the collective WTF from the donkey call. But once that settles in, the table is thinking, How could he push with the non-nut? How did he know he’d get called with the third nut?

I still can’t answer all these questions. I just had a feeling. The pro next to me shakes his head, less for laying down the nut and more in acknowledgment that I had made a sick read and an even sicker play.

Anyone can play the nut, but to know deep down inside your turd tunnel, you have someone beat and to force them to make a mistake… That’s the element of intuition, strategy and gamesmanship that makes me love this unholy game.