It's a common concept in group psychology that where there is a vacuum of power, someone eventually will move in to fill that vacuum. At our main table at Lil Kim's Cove tonight, that was done by a man named Lou.
"You're slowing down the game," he said several times to a woman across from us who took her time betting. (The slowness may have been due to the bottle after bottle of Corona she was given.)
Lou insisted there was no reason to think about calling before the flop. One look at the cards, and the decision should be instant. "Trying to move the game along," he explained.
"Ship 'em! Next dealer," he declared after a few hands.
Lou's bossy approach irked a couple of players, and they told him so. We tried to be the obedient type -- and without saying so, we were waiting for a good hand to take a stand on multiple fronts. Trouble is, our best cards were marginal and other players raised around us before the flop to run us off.
Things were so bleak that we didn't win a pot in the first hour of play. but when you least expect it....
BLINDS: 500/1,000
IN THE POCKET: Qh-10d
It's the first hand after the one-hour "color-up" break, and we have only 3,000 chips. Deciding it's now or never, we go all-in. Three other players do the same.
ON THE FLOP: A-3-5 (all black cards)
It's looking bleak -- but everyone who still can bet checks.
ON THE TURN: 7
Bleaker still -- but everyone checks again.
ON THE RIVER: 5
We presume we're sunk -- but then everyone checks. "I've got a queen," we say.
"I've got nothing," Lou and another player say. The Queen is high card -- and amazingly, we jumped from 3,000 to 10,000 chips despite it all.
But we couldn't win any other hands, and did well to make the semifinal table. We went all-in again with A-10 in our first hand there, and an Ace fell on the flop. But three diamonds fell as well, and another man made a flush to put us out in 16th place.
MINISTRY MOMENT: At an online table a day or two ago, we had a nice chat with another player who finally decided: "You must be a preacher.... or a teacher."
"Wellll...." we wrote in response -- then invited the other player to this blog. We welcome that player, as well as others we've invited from the NBC Sports table. If you're interested in some preaching and teaching, we have a separate part of the web for that.
UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 37 final tables in 86 nights (43.0%) - 8 cashes.
YAHOO POKER TOTAL: $13,203 - unchanged, because we haven't played there.
NBC SPORTS POKER TOTAL: Five-player Sit-N-Go games: 25-27-4-4-6. Full tournaments - 12 final tables in 91 games (13.2%), 1 cash.
We made the final table in the 2:30 p.m. ET tournament today, for the third time in six days! We've scored a 1st, 8th and 5th -- and the smallest turnout in any of the tournaments was 161 players.
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