Variance: Playing infinitely deep

So I'm playing with infinite effective stacks, and I open on the BTN with 9♥8♥.

Dude in the BB 3-bets.

He's re-popped my BTN opens all day, so I take a stand. I 4-bet.

He thinks for 30 seconds... and then 5-bets. Large. I 6-bet larger.

It goes round and round like that. What did Harrington say about the 30-bet? Always aces? How do I adjust to a guy who is capable of 45-betting light? By the time I remember (you're supposed to tighten up your 44-bet range, dammit), he's already put in the 50-bet.

Two hours pass when a nugget of strategy comes to me. I recall a controversial video about how flatting a 70-bet in position can be +EV in some situations. That's right! Hands like 98s have outstanding implied odds, as long as you're very, very deep. And we're infinitely deep.

I flat and see a flop in position.

7♣6♦5♠

Instantly, even before I recognize that I flopped the nuts, villain quietly announces "all in." I ask him how much he has, and he says "infinite," and I say "show me."

He starts feverishly shoveling chips into the middle, and my mind races.

Could villain have a worse value hand? Am I only calling for a chop? Is villain freerolling me with something like 9♣8♣?

I'm no dummy. It's the oldest adage in the book - never let yourself get freerolled infinitely deep. Says so in Super System, I think.

I'm doing some ninja combinatorics and odds calculations on the fly as villain pumps chip stack after chip stack into the middle. The casino eventually opens another table to accommodate his never-ending checks, and then another, and then another and another and another one yet.

I talk myself in and out of calling at least a hundred times, and then again a hundred more. I do and redo the math, and it all just seems so close.

I can't decide by the numbers, so I'm watching villain very closely for any hint of a live tell, anything that might betray information.

The movements of his hands as he pushes forward more chips, the way he eyes my chip stack and then his own, his breathing patterns, how he chews when he eats breakfast, how he arranges his silverware on his dinner plates, the sound of his snoring when he sleeps, his surprise when he wakes, the tone in his voice on his daily phone calls to his wife when he tells her he loves her but does not know when he'll see her again, if he'll ever see her again.

After 4 weeks, I pick up a tell - finally, a tell! Thus far, he's pushed chips into the middle in a deliberate, measured manner, but suddenly, in an apparent rage, he grabs two handfuls of chips and violently thrusts them into the pot.

Strong is weak! He has nothing! I feel such joy, I can't wait to tell him that the nightmare is over, that I call, that everything will be OK.

But suddenly, just as quickly as his rage manifested itself, it vanishes, and he starts to cry. He's crying a wailing, sorrowful, agonizing cry like a wounded animal, a man who has lost hope, a man who doesn't hold the nuts.

Weak is strong.

Dammit. I'm back to square one. Villain has a good cry and then continues to fill the pot with chips.

It's 5 years later, then 10. I get a college degree online from my phone and at one point I fall in love with a beautiful young dealer, but it doesn't work out. I'm experiencing life as much as I can when you're infinitely deep and waiting for the checks to fall. Villain puts on 50 pounds, which I think might say something about his self discipline - his restraint - and it makes me want to call more than it makes me want to fold, but I decide to wait, that I have time to think before acting on the hunch, and he eventually loses the weight.

40 more years go by, and one day, villain's arthritis is paining him so, and as he slides chips into the pot with his mangled arm, wrinkled by age and use, it happens - he accidentally flips over a card: 9♣.

I am getting freerolled.

"I fold" I say.

Villain nods, collects 0% of stacks from the middle, and walks away.