We'll remember tonight's tournament at Lil Kim's Cove for a long time to come -- not because of how we played, but because of what happened in a hand we folded.
BLINDS: 100/200.
IN THE POCKET: A-8 of clubs.
We're "one off the button" at a full table. A woman two seats from us raises to 300. We join in, as do a couple of other players. The dealer, who is a college student (he wore his ID badge on his belt) folds. Yes, that will matter.
ON THE FLOP: 10-10-3, one of them a club.
With the dealer folding, we're now effectively on the button. But players ahead of us make sizable bets of 500+, and we don't risk it. So we fold.
ON THE TURN: 10.
"F***!!!!!!!" exclaims the dealer -- and he throws the deck down so hard on the table that the cards scatter from one end to the other. "I had quads, man!"
OK, so now we know nobody else does. Trouble is, no one's sure which cards to burn and turn for the river.
"I had a ****ing boat!" a player across the table says in frustration. He has pocket Queens. Another player turns over A-3, so he had hopes of an even better full house.
In Wild West poker legend, pistols might have been drawn at this point. Thankfully, that doesn't happen -- and everyone keeps their cool. Well, except the dealer is still muttering about giving up quads.
The tournament director is called over, and he agrees there's no way to sort out which card should come up next. The players still in the hand agree to divide the pot. But that doesn't mean everyone is agreeable about it. It takes a minute or two for the dealer to apologize, and the man with the Q's to quickly accept it.
Poker Quiz Time: Which Biblical "fruit of the spirit" was our dealer lacking? (The answer is coming in another post.)
As for our game: we turned A-Q in the pocket into a couple of early straights, and built a starting stack of 5,000 chips into a lead of almost 14,000. But we couldn't catch any cards after that, and our chip stack slowly drained away. We survived an all-in bet with 9-10 of spades when no one called, and held on to finish tied for 11th [CORRECTED] out of about 30 players.
The end came with a double-take out, as the college student joined us in going in with blinds at 1,000/2,000. We had A-J, but a woman with pocket 7's caught a third one on the flop to seal our fate.
MINISTRY MOMENT: We attended a funeral out of town during the afternoon, and decided to wear our suit and tie to poker night. (It works for Mike Sexton, after all.) But we put on a lapel pin which said "PRAISE JESUS."
We lost an early hand after showing what we called "almighty pair of 2's." Then at break time, we turned to the now-composed college student to our left. "This is what I really consider Almighty."
The student strained to read the pin, but he agreed with what we said. Now if the cigarette-smoking easily-frustrated young man will learn to live by it....
UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 24 final tables in 57 nights (42.1%) -- 7 cashes.
YAHOO POKER TOTAL: $11,704 -- down $24.
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