We simply asked for trouble at Lil Kim's Cove tonight. Harry sat directly to our right -- the same Harry who took us out at the Soho final table one night before. (He wound up winning the tournament.) Oh, and the same Harry who gave us the bad beat two weeks ago in an A-Q vs. A-J matchup.
History seemed to be repeating itself early in the evening. Harry was making big hands and winning pots. It led to this, and admittedly our memory's a bit fuzzy on some of it....
BLINDS: 100/200
IN THE POCKET: J-9 of hearts
The betting raises the stakes to 500. We give it a whirl, along with Harry and a couple of others.
ON THE FLOP: 6h-6d-3 (not a heart).
Harry's ahead of us in the order, and bets 600. With three hearts, we go against better judgment and call. All the other players fold. An "over-card" or another heart could be coming....
ON THE TURN: 6c.
"Whoa!" we say at the sight of that.
"That's OK. You've probably got me," Harry says. He checks. So do we.
ON THE RIVER: 8.
No flush, no straight, no nuttin' for us. Harry checks again. What would you do here? Make a bluffing bet, hoping to steal the pot?
We don't. We check again. "I have a Jack," we say.
"I have quads," Harry says -- as in the 6 of spades. We thank Harry for being so nice to us, by merely checking twice. (We still need to address that topic here.)
So what do you think Harry was doing, by checking twice? After pondering it at the computer, we don't think he was being Mr. Nice Guy to us. He probably wanted us to make a bet toward the pot, then come back with a "check-raise" to make us pay -- or even go all in. Harry may also have been thinking of the house rules at Lil Kim's Cove: win with quads and get a 5,000-chip bonus.
But that was Harry's high point for the night. He started losing hands (even one to us, when we had a pair of Aces), and was eliminated in about 15th place. We hung on, took out an opponent with three 10's, and made it to our second final table in as many nights. But rising blinds did us in, as we went all in with our last 5,000 when we paired a 5 on the flop. An opponent with three K's overpowered us, and we finished sixth.
MINISTRY MOMENT: We had one tonight, but a better one came earlier in the week at an NBC Sports online game. One player at the table went by the name "FloodofSins."
We keep Bibles near our computer for moments like this -- and give thanks that mistakes of the past are washed away by God "as with a flood." (Psm. 90:4-5)
UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 32 final tables in 74 nights (43.2%) - 8 cashes. We've reached four final tables in a row, and are two hands shy of an amazing eight in a row.
YAHOO POKER TOTAL: $13,082 -- down $40.
We're not playing at Yahoo much nowadays, because we're going for the money offered at NBC Sports. Besides, we think the true Texas Hold' em format at NBC Sports is making us sharper at live tournaments than Yahoo's small-bet "cash game" format.
NBC SPORTS TOTAL: Five-player games - 12-14-1-1-5. Cash tournaments - 3 final tables in 33 games (9.1%), no cashes.
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Uhhh -- here we might have written spam. We would be wary of that link.
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