Thursday, November 5, 2009

Poker Night 110 (UPDATED): Quadzilla

When was the last time you had made quads at a poker table? It could have happened to us Wednesday night at Soho Bar and Grill -- not once, but twice.

It was part of a night where we finished tied for fourth place, out of more than 40 players. After an early escape when we topped an opponent 8 of spades for a flush with a 9, the first big moment of the night came....

BLINDS: 50/100

IN THE POCKET: 8-8

It's a full table, and several people call. We choose to limp.

ON THE FLOP: 9-5-5

A woman to our immediate right is first to act, and bets about 600. "Get out of my pot," she warns with a bit of humor. Not with two pair, we won't. We call, as do a couple of others.

ON THE TURN: 8.

With a full house, we're certainly not getting out now. The woman seems to smell trouble and checks to us. We bet 2,500. A man who was moved to our table only one hand before calls, and the woman bails out.

ON THE RIVER: 8.

On the night the World Series ends, the runners come home to score! But knowing the house rules for Big Dog Poker, we have to check to assure a quad bonus.

A man to our left later says he caught us noticeably squirming at this point, and figured we had quads. Looking back on it.... yeah, our posture changed a bit at the turn. We knew we had a big-time winner. Around poker pros, that would be a "tell" which could cost us big profits.

But the man across the table apparently doesn't notice this, perhaps because he just sat down with us. So he bets 8,000.

"I'll call," we say. "And this is a $5,000 call, because I've got quads." (We kept a level voice at that point, instead of shouting and jumping around like we just won a TV game show.) Our opponent never saw that coming.

The second quad chance came in the second hour, when we had a 5 and the flop was Q-8-5. A woman across from us went all in -- and fearing she had two pair, we folded. Yet when the dealer played out the hand, the turn and river were 5-5. Ouch, that hurts.

Suffice to say it was a night when we hit big hands several times. In one case, we had the Queen of spades when A-K and two other spades hit the board. The "nut flush" let us eliminate two other players.

We took 100,000 chips to a nine-player final table -- but big blinds ate away at our stack, and we finally had to go all-in with A-4. A young man wearing a New York Yankee hat had K-K, and no Ace came to bail us out. Yes, we did the proper NYY thing at the end -- declaring: "Thaaaaaaa Yankee wins."

MINISTRY MOMENT: We showed our "Jesus as your savior" coin to a retired veteran at our immediate left early in the evening. He had trouble reading the message for a moment, then eventually said he agreed with it.

This man had recently spent time in a V.A. hospital for a heart problem -- so we reminded him of the comfort Jesus can offer. See II Thessalonians 2:16-17 for more about that.

UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 46 final tables in 110 nights (41.8%) - 10 cashes. We've now played at Soho five times, and made the final table twice.

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