I fold. Will you show?

Quick story about a hand at Harrah’s New Orleans last Friday night, at a $1/3 no limit table.

Near the end of a horribly bad, losing session, refusing to put any more money on the table, I stumble into a Broadway straight on the turn, get snap called on a smallish bet by the pre-flop aggressor, and ship my last $100 or so in despite the river card pairing the board.

How we got to this point is irrelevant.

The villain is a 40-ish woman who is irritatingly loud.  I truly do not know her name, but for purposes of this blog I’ll refer to her as “Irene.”  On the one hand, Irene is not a very experienced player.  This poker room allows a blind straddle from any position.  She keeps asking for an explanation, claiming she doesn’t understand what a straddle is, when to do it, why or why not, and consequently gets confused as to when to call $3 vs. when to call $6.  On the other hand, she is shown a surprising amount of aggression prior to this hand, and had min-raised to $6 (or maybe thought she was calling a straddle???) then 4-bet over top of my raise on this hand.  I shouldn’t have called but thought she might be a little bit drunk; then I got lucky.

Calling my all-in bet will consume 80% of her remaining stack.

After thinking and squirming for a minute, she says “I fold.  Will you show?”  Two of my buddies were at the same table, and we all heard the same thing.  Thinking the hand was now over, I said “Sorry, I don’t show.”

Then Irene says “In that case, I call!” and pushes forward the stack of chips she had counted out for the call amount, then flips over pocket jacks (the board is AT4-Q-Q).

I’m sure my straight is good, but expect the dealer to intervene and tell Irene she can’t do that because she already announced a fold.  But I go ahead and show my KJ and the dealer pushes the entire pot, including the final calling chips, in my direction.

Wha—?

All’s well that ends well, in this case, but suppose I had been bluffing?  Then there would be a big difference depending on whether she really said “I fold.  Will you show?”  Or said “If I fold, will you show?”  I don’t know how that would have turned out but the angle shooting accusations would make quite a more colorful story.