Poker Night #79: Yes, We CAN

"Happy Canada Day," we said throughout the day -- to our neighbor (who visited Vancouver years ago), in an online tournament (to hardly any response) and in tonight's live game at Lil Kim's Cove. We actually took a Canadian flag we bought at a church convention in Toronto in the 1990s, and waved it a little when we won pots.

"That's really irritating me," a man finally admitted. Perhaps we shouldn't have been surprised. He's a Fort Benning soldier and an Iraq veteran, who says Canadians never were deployed to Iraq. They were sent to Afghanistan, he said. He seemed reluctant to admit the duty there was every bit as difficult.

The soldier wound up joining us at the final table. He went out early there, while we held on to finish third -- good, but one place shy of the prize money. We survived one all-in bet with the field cut to three, but not the second one:

BLINDS: 5,000/10,000

IN THE POCKET: K-Q.

We're dealing -- and with three players to go, that means we're first up to bet. Not expecting anything better to come, we push our stack of 20,000 chips all in. The player to our left, who's become known for betting big with almost anything, calls. The player to our right raises and puts himself all-in with about 25,000 more! The man to the left calls, to potentially take us both out and win the match.

Some players at Lil Kim's Cove are reluctant to flip over their cards at a moment like this, for reasons we don't quite understand. We show first. The man to the right then shows A-A. "I'm probably about to get busted," he says with skepticism. The man to the left only has 9-8.

ON THE FLOP: 10-Q-6.

One down, one to go.

ON THE TURN: 5.

Swing and a miss.

ON THE RIVER: 8. The Aces hold up, while we don't.

MINISTRY MOMENT: We've told you recently about Harry, one of the better players we face at live tournaments. He told us tonight he'll probably go into the hospital next week for voluntary thyroid surgery.

Harry is well aware of how things can go wrong at a hospital. He says he wound up spending seven months in care last year, including one month at a hospice. We told Harry we'd pray for him. Will you join us?

UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 35 final tables in 79 nights (44.3%) - 8 cashes. (Seven final tables in the last nine!)