between jacks and a hard place...

"that's poker" was the mantra that accompanied my catastrophic demise at the weekly poker game and the phrase that every player, be it amateur or professional, has uttered or heard countless times when faced with the improbable "suck out". however, i feel that my battle with this particular card in the deck is more than just some fatalistic occurrence, but something more along the lines of a cosmically ordained punishment, my own personal level of hell occupied by the scourge of playing card royalty, the jacks. what to do with jacks? this is my quandary. yes, they are considered "paint", but the weakest version. if i find two of them in my hand pre-flop, i try to bet high and push out anyone who might be able to catch a better hand on the flop. if they turn up in my opponents hand, i lose all of my money... all of it, and this is the truth, no exaggerations here. last week, after a run of bad cards, i ended up with all of my chips in with Ah-9h against, wait for it...pocket jacks, and i lost all of my money, all of it, see? fast forward to this week and my cards, my playing, and my chip stack were much better. i had a dominant stack 5 handed and was patiently biding my time and getting into and out of hands with no great expenditures on my part. the blinds were at 150-300 and i'm sitting in the big blind. i look down at 8h-9d and watch as UTG folds, second to act calls, then a fold, small blind calls, and with a relatively weak hand, i check. the flop comes rainbow Q-10-J.... yahtzee, i've flopped a made straight. at this point, i'm pretty sure there are no A-K hands out there as i would normally expect a pre-flop raise with that kind of hand, so i decide to slow play and check my straight after the small blind checks. fourth to act then raises, small blind folds, and i take a look at my opponents stack and raise enough to put him all in, $1550 in total. he thinks about this for a while, during which i put him on maybe top or middle pair, he hit the Q or J. eventually, he calls...i turn over my straight and he holds onto his cards which is fine with me because i can see the despair in his eyes. the turn comes J which does not cause me any great concern because a set does not touch me. then the river, another J hits.... at this point i need to see my opponents cards, especially with a full house possibility out there. he turn over Ks-Js (a little bit of a slow roll but i'm too stunned to notice at the time)....you have got to be kidding me, quad jacks? that is when the room started spinning.... from that point on, i was beyond tilt, i was upside down and even though i still had a decent stack , it felt like i was the small stack at the table after that beat. i ended up about 5 hands later with all of my chips in the middle with A-J offsuit. i ran into an A-Q held by a bigger stack. could i catch a jack to stop my tilt? of course not... and so i ran screaming from the room tearing at my eyes trying to rid them of the image of runner-runner jacks (ok, i made that part up). i feel like i might have been more philosophical had he caught an ace to make a higher straight, but quad jacks? it still burns me after a couple of nights of sleeping it off, can you tell? i was a 2 to 1 favorite... but as everyone to whom i have related this story says, "that's poker".