"Michael Jackson" were the first two words we heard as we walked into Lil Kim's Cove for tonight's tournament. A woman was on a cell phone, telling someone about the singer's sudden death. It was the talk of many in the club. But the players were there for poker -- and this hand brought a play some could call "Human Nature"....
BLINDS: 200/400
IN THE POCKET: K-10
We won an early pot with pocket Aces, so we have about 9,000 chips. A call is affordable, and several players join in.
ON THE FLOP: Q-J-9
A room-service straight! The only problem is that we're first in line to bet. At the back of the line, we could create something in reaction to other players.
We decide to go big, which goes against our usual game plan -- "3,500."
"That's a bold bet," says the woman to our immediate left who has folded. (She eventually builds an enormous chip stack by eliminating several players.)
"K-10?" a man to her left asks. (He's folded, too.) We pretend to ignore him. Only one man, who may not have heard that, chooses to take us on.
ON THE TURN: Q
A pair on the board opens the door for a possible full house. But we refuse to back out of the throttle -- "3,500 more." The other man calls.
ON THE RIVER: 5
Seemingly harmless -- but why does that other player keep calling? We slow down slightly and bet 3,000.
"All I have is 1,525," that man says. He calls, going all-in.
"You guessed I had K-10?" we say to the man who posed the question. "You're right" and we show it. Our opponent had A-10, and missed the straight. It's a bounty tournament, so the knockout earns us a 5,000-chip bonus -- on top of the 8,500+ the opponent had.
That was the high point of the night for us, as good cards didn't come often after that. We held on to take 10,000 chips to a nine-player final table. But on the first hand at the final table, our pocket Aces were stymied by another player who went all-in and wound up with three 9's.
P.S. There was NO "Michael Jackson luck" for us during the tournament tonight. We really don't believe in such things -- so when we were dealt J-5 of hearts at one point in the night, we folded a "Jackson-5" hand. It would NOT have won.
MINISTRY MOMENT: The NBC Sports online poker room frustrates a lot of players by occasionally kicking them out due to computer "latency" problems. (In our case, automatic anti-virus updates can do it.) During a tournament earlier in the day, one player wrote: "JesusChrist got booted for a f***in 10 mins."
"I've been booted, too," we respond. "And I like Jesus Christ." No one responded to that.
UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 34 final tables in 78 nights (43.6%) - 8 cashes.
We've made six final tables in the last eight, eight in the last 12 -- and let the record show we were the only player to make the final table both Wednesday and Thursday night this week.
YAHOO POKER TOTAL: $13,211 - RECORD HIGH, up $129.
NBC SPORTS POKER TOTAL: Five-player games - 17-20-2-3-5; cash tournaments - 4 final tables in 52 games (7.7%), no cashes.
Our best result yet there occurred last Friday -- an 8th-place finish out of 146 players. We've wound up in the "top 25" in four of the last ten tournaments.
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