The Great Poker Mystery

My first experience playing casino poker went down at the Ameristar in St. Louis about four years ago. I was so clueless that when the dealer asked if I wanted to post a blind I had no idea what that meant. She must have spent a minute trying to explain it to me. Yeah that was embarassing. I had bought in for $60 at a $3/6 table, which should have been nearly as embarassing as not knowing what it meant to post a blind, but I didn't realize that either. I can't believe how clueless I was back then. Here are the only two hands I remember from that day: I had J3 and the board ended up something like J J 9 5 2. Don't ask me how I got involved with J3. I can only hope I was in the big blind. Anyway some other guy with a towering pyramid of white chips had QJ and he took a hefty chunk out of my stack. I asked the dealer why we didn't split it cause I had seen another hand where two people had top pair on a paired board where another board card made the best kicker so they split. The dealer had to tell me how to make your best five card hand. Then pyramid guy chimed in, "it helps to have a good kicker." Lol, that was what I learned that day. Kickers matter. Brilliant. Ok so here's the other hand I remember: I had open limped with 66 from middle position. The flop was something like T 6 3 rainbow. The big blind, who looked like he knew what he was doing because he was wearing dark sunglasses and was effortlessly shuffling his chips, led out with a bet. So what would you do here? Well these days I would put him on a some trash hand like T4 or J3 and try to keep him in the lead as long as possible because he probably had a 0.3629% chance of drawing out on me. That is, I would pause for a second as if considering folding, then call. What did I do? Having no idea what the word "set" meant or just how fucking powerful a hand that is heads up on a rainbow board, I asked the dealer if I could raise!!!! Ha. Of course the dealer told me that I had every right to raise and without a second thought sunglasses man mucked his cards saying "can't beat three 6s." At the moment I wasn't all that shocked because I didn't realized what a feat that was, but looking back on it I am just mystified. It would have been one thing if he had said something like "oh you got me beat fo shizzle" or "yeah you got top two at least. But he knew which fucking set I had!! How the hell did he know I didn't have 33? I will never know.