Thursday, October 22, 2009

Poker Night 108: True Love Waits

After the overconfident moment one night before, we didn't go to Lil Kim's Cove intending to play extra-tight tonight. Things simply happened that way. But we took what you might call an early romantic fling....

BLINDS: 25/50

IN THE POCKET: Q-10 of hearts

It's only the second hand of the tournament, so there's no trouble in throwing 50 in this pot. A man to our immediate left raises 100, and we join several players in calling that.

ON THE FLOP: Kh-8h-5 (not a heart; number may not be exact)

We check -- but the man who raised 100 before bets 250 now. With a flush draw before us, we call.

ON THE TURN: 7 of spades

We check. The man to our left now bets 500. It's still early and we're still hopeful, so we call. Everyone else is out of the hand.

ON THE RIVER: 3 of hearts

The river runs perfectly! But we check again. Our opponent now bets 1,000. You might be tempted to raise there, but we're concerned our opponent might also be on a draw. We simply call.

"The hearts came in for me," we say as we show and tell. Our opponent is stopped cold. He says nothing, and simply drops his cards without showing them.

That nice pot was the only one we took in the first hour of play. Even though the man we beat poked us a little about playing scattered hands, unimpressive deals kept forcing us to fold. We took 6,500 chips to the second hour of play, then won a couple of big pots to climb to 59,000!

The end result was a final table for the third Thursday night in a row. We finished fifth, finally falling with an all-in raise from the big blind with A-3. A 3 came on the flop, but another player had Queens to beat us.

MINISTRY MOMENT: The man we topped with the heart flush (who also wound up at the final table) took a look at our "Jesus as your Savior" coin. "Do you agree with that message?" we asked him.

"Oh yes," answered a grandfather of at least three. "Absolutely. There IS no other message!"

We beg to differ. "Well, there are plenty of other messages out there -- but only one true one." More on that message in another post.

UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 45 final tables in 108 games (41.7%) - 10 cashes.

YAHOO POKER TOTAL: $13,798 - unchanged. (They don't award real money, so we seldom play there now.)

NBC SPORTS POKER TOTAL: Five-player sit-n-goes - 30-35-10-5-8. Full tournaments - 23 final tables in 195 games (11.8%), 2 cashes.

We're on a good roll online at NBC Sports -- with five top-20 finishes and two final tables in the last five days!

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