Well, might as well tell this story from Day 1, as recent happenings are making me concerned.
In early-mid Day 1, two players were in for a standard 2.5x raise, and I had 7c8c on the button. More often than not, I fold that type of hand in the Main Event, because I don't like having to shoot off a large portion of my stack drawing, and you can lose a ton if you get outflopped by a higher flush.
Anyway, in this case, I called $500.
I thought to myself, "Come on... let's see a flopped straight or all clubs!"
And the board came:
QcJc9c
Both players checked to me. I figured that, given the super-draw-heavy board, it's unlikely someone would be checking unless they flopped higher clubs.
I thought I'd just be betting and getting 2 quick folds.
Instead, I bet, the original raiser called, the other folded.
Turn was Qd.
He checked, I bet again, he called. I now put him on some kind of club draw (most likely Ac), or perhaps he had a boat and was playing it weird.
River was 2h -- can't get more blank than that.
He fired out 5k.
I had a sinking feeling and realized I was fucked. Still, there wasn't any way I could fold, since he could easily have had AQ or KQ and was just waiting until the river to make sure that a 4th club didn't hit.
I called, he showed 99, I lost.
Okay, that was a cooler... I lost 11k on the hand total. I didn't understand the way he played it, but whatever.
The guy to his direct right, who folded pre-flop, immediately piped up, "Wow!! I had Ace-7 of clubs! That would have been ugly! I'm so glad I folded!"
It didn't register at first, so I actually tweeted that a hand folded pre-flop which would have made the action much more crazy.
About 5 minutes later, I replayed the conversation in my head, and said WTF?!?!?!
How could he have had Ac7c when I had 7c8c?!
Were there really two 7c in the deck?
Did he just remember wrong, perhaps having As7s and confusing it for Ac7c? Or maybe he folded Ac6c and remembered it as Ac7c. Or maybe he had Ac7c the previous hand, and confused himself into thinking it was this hand.
Or......
Did I really just lose 11k without really holding 7c8c? Did I perhaps have 7s8s, and blew 1/3 of my stack with 8 high?
This was eating at me for another 10 minutes or so, when I finally just asked the guy if he really had Ac7c that hand. He said yes. I asked if he was sure, and he said, "Pretty sure."
I then told him what happened, and the table got into the discussion. Unfortunately, we couldn't check the deck because it had already changed.
I didn't double-check my hand at any point (something I usually do, and something I'm doing EVERY TIME now, since that happened), but I clearly remember hoping for an all-club flop right after looking at my cards and calling pre-flop, so how could I have not had clubs?
I'll never know the answer to the above, but reading about this most recent error, I have to wonder if perhaps I really was playing with a deck that had two 7 of clubs, and I lost a big pot because of it.
Either that, or one of the two people claiming to hold that hand needs work on their short term memory.