Poker Night #85: The Waiting Game

It's amazing how many religious messages we've read or heard in the last few days with the same general theme: waiting -- usually in terms of waiting on God. That word sometimes pays dividends in poker as well. Tonight's live tournament at Lil Kim's Cove reminded us of that a couple of times. Take this hand....

BLINDS: 500/1,000

IN THE POCKET: J-J

A man ahead of us tends to make pre-flop raises often, whether he has a strong hand or not. He challenges the semifinal table here by raising to 4,000. We have about 32,000 -- some of it from a check-raise against this man earlier in the evening which cost him 1,250, and wound up putting another player out. So we decide to call. No one else does.

ON THE FLOP: J-9-6

The man ahead of us tries to chase us away from three Jacks with a continuation bet of 9,000. Unh-unh.

"I'll go all-in" -- and we set out a total of 28,000. Our opponent wasn't quite expecting this.

"You hit a jack?!" he wonders aloud.

"Maybe I did...." We think a woman sitting between us finished the sentence before we did. "....and maybe I didn't."

In the earlier situation, three hearts fell on the flop and the man decided NOT to match our raise from his 900 to 2,100. He was wise, because we had A-6 of hearts and hit a "nut flush." But after thinking it over this time, he calls by adding 19,000. Not so wise -- because his best card is a 9.

"That's a bad call," another player at the table says several times afterward. "I can't believe you did that."

"Running 9's?" a different player suggests. Nope. A 9 comes on the river, but even then three 9's are not enough.

This hand and another nice pot win moments later gives us about 73,000 chips. But believe it or not, it eroded and we wound up in fifth place. We take the blame for that -- chasing a couple of pricey draws which didn't pan out, and folding another player's all-in bluff after we called 25,000 on the flop and turn with 10-10-7-7-A. (We were one diamond short of another nut flush.)

MINISTRY MOMENT: We're not sure who's choosing it on the jukebox, but the Brooks and Dunn song "Believe" came up again tonight.

"Do you believe?" we quietly asked a young man sitting to our left.

"I'd better," he decides. We think you'd better do it, too.

UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 37 final tables in 85 nights (43.5%) -- 8 cashes. If that impresses you, consider this: another man across from us claimed he makes final tables "about 80 percent of the time." Wow, we have work to do.