Poker Night #82: Advice and Consent

Sometimes when you play poker, the good cards simply don't come for awhile -- and when they do, they aren't good enough. That happened to us tonight at Lil Kim's Cove. This early hand will give you an impression of how the night went:

BLINDS: 50/100

IN THE POCKET: 5-5

We're in the small blind, and choose to limp in by simply calling. Several players join the pot without raising.

ON THE FLOP: 5-7-8

A great flop -- but what do we do with it? First in the betting order, we lead out with 600. Several players are unafraid, and call.

ON THE TURN: 9

Uh-oh. Now we wish we'd bet more before, to chase the "chasers" away. A potential straight is obvious, but we feel a need to stand tall. So we bet 500, and a man to our left calls.

"You two are the blinds," a man across the table says -- then reviews the betting aloud. "I'm trying to figure out what you have." After a moment of pondering, he raises to 1,000. We fear the worst, but call. After all, if the board pairs on the river, we have a full house. The player to our left folds.

ON THE RIVER: K

We hit the brakes and check. The man across the table bets 1,000, and we feel compelled to call in the hope he's bluffing. He's not -- as he shows a 6 to win with a straight.

"I should have bet more at the flop," we say. Several players then talk about the hand, and the consensus is that our bet of 600 was proper if the goal was to get people betting and take a big pot.

"The cards simply didn't go your way," the pot winner concludes. Amen.

That man later offered us on-the-spot guidance, when we were down to 2,500 chips with blinds at 500/1,000. "Might as well go all-in and get your money's worth," he said.

"Don't listen to him," a man to our left responded.

We decided right there to apply the principle of Proverbs 15:22. "Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed." So we poll the table for advice, not telling anyone what we have. Enough players suggest folding that we fold.

Result: our J-10 would have split the pot with the man who suggested going all-in.

Next hand, we look at pocket Aces. "What do you think I should do now?" I ask the man across the table.

"Fold," he says. Another player at the table says fold. One says call, while a young man to our right suggests going all-in."

"Sold! I'm all-in," we announce. Trouble is, another player hits two pair on the flop with Jacks and 3's -- and when nothing on the board pairs, our Aces are beaten. We finish about 27th overall.

"That's the last time I listen to YOU!" we mockingly complain to the young man on our right. It makes for a good laugh all-around. (But you know what? The man across the table was right twice in a row.)

MINISTRY MOMENT: We wondered last week if the jukebox at Lil Kim's Cove had any Christian music hiding in it. As you might guess at a bar, we didn't find any. But early in the evening, we heard a surprise -- the Brooks and Dunn song "Believe," with its refrain about finding truth in the "words written in red."

We quietly sing along to it, and find a man next to us doing the same thing.
"That's a good song, isn't it?" we say to the man.

"Sure is."

"Do you believe those words -- about the words written in red?" The man said he did. "The words of Jesus," we add.

If you have a "red-letter Bible," Christ's words are printed in red -- not only at the start of the New Testament, but at the end in Revelation. Take some time to review those words, and you might be challenged. The way you live might be challenged as well.

UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 36 final tables in 82 nights (43.9%) - 8 cashes.

YAHOO POKER TOTAL: $13,206 - up $42 (only one session played there in the last week).

NBC SPORTS POKER TOTAL: Five-player sit-n-goes - 18-26-3-3-6. Full tournaments - 7 final tables in 72 games (9.7%), no cashes.

Independence Day weekend was strong there for us -- with a 6th place out of 152 players on Friday, and a best-yet 5th out of 62 on Sunday afternoon. We figure we've earned "poker points" in about 15 percent of our games.