Poker Night #52: Better Late Than Never

First the bad news: The Thursday night poker action has changed at Lil Kim's Cove. There's now a tournament doubleheader -- first game at 7pm, second around 9:30pm. So when we showed up at 8:20pm, the action was already down to three tables. All we could do was watch.

Now the good news: we WON the nightcap! With about 30 players taking part, we survived to the final two. Then we split the prize money with a young man, who looked like a college student. We win $30; he gets $20 and the "bucket of beers" we don't drink. But we had a 2-1 chip lead when we settled, so we can claim victory. (Or at least we're going to!)

Several big bets did not go well for us early. But then several all-in moments did. One with pocket aces gained us a double-up of 9,000 chips, which gave us enough cushion to hold on to the final table. We also were helped by the fact that a couple of players quit early for the evening, and "shared the wealth" with everyone else when they did. We're calling this "Barack Obama rules."

At the final table, we started with a rather small stack. So we bided our time while a couple of players ran out of chips and patience. Then the pocket pairs came in bunches. In one case, our pocket Kings led to a third on the board -- and we sang a poker version of "We Three Kings."

In another case, we took out two players at once:

BLINDS: 5,000/10,000

IN THE POCKET: 10-10

A woman to our right goes all-in with 30,000 chips. We dare to call it. Then a third player goes all-in. Both our opponents have the same hand: A-J.

ON THE FLOP: Other stuff. They were turned over so fast that we couldn't take notes -- but the 10's held up, to knock the field down to four.

A couple of hands later, we had pocket 7's when a man across from us went all-in. A third 7 came on the turn, and he was gone.

We'd like to declare our recent live tournament slump over. This was our first final table since late September at The Roadhouse, and our first time in the money (top two) since July.

MINISTRY MOMENT: Two players had a look at our "Jesus as your Savior" coin. One woman quietly agreed with the message, saying nothing. We never could ask the question to the second person -- a man who had a scorpion in a tiny plastic case for his card protector. He explained it was a horoscope thing.

UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 22 final tables in 52 nights (42.3%) - 7 cashes (13.5%).

We should note Lil Kim's Cove will be closed the next two Thursday nights for holidays. (We had work commitments, anyway.) We're assuming Club H2O will be closed for Wednesday night play December 24; we'll have to call about December 31, because we're not sure.

YAHOO POKER TOTAL: $10,138 - up $531. (Off $130 from our record high, set Dec. 17.)