Wheel of the Gods

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention a particular hand that I wasn't involved in (and then no more poker, I promise). Although I've seen one or two straight flushes in online play, I've never seen one in a standard brick and mortar game, and despite the fact that one of the guys at my regular game claims to have had two royal flushes, I was beginning to doubt that real cards were capable of producing such things.

That is, until last night, when a player at my table flopped one of those things and slowplayed for very good value. He was able to limp in from the small blind; the flop came A24s; on each subsequent round he bet enough to get some money back but not enough to scare off his opponent, and after the final round of betting, showed down the 35s, and took down a ~$80 pot. Note that in a high/low split game a straight flush wheel is an even better hand than a royal flush; the absolute nuts low by definition, and 99.9% likely to be the nuts high. (Maybe you'll have A2s, 345s is on the board, and somebody else has 67s. I wouldn't worry too much about that though.)