"If you check, you lose. If you bet, you win." A young man to our right told us that tonight at Lil Kim's Cove. But poker hands don't always work that way. In fact, the young man should have realized that a few minutes earlier....
BLINDS: 50/100
IN THE POCKET: K-8 of clubs
This is a hand we wouldn't play most of the time. But we're in the big blind, and no one raised. In fact, only a couple of players even bothered to toss in the minimum. So sure, we'll call.
ON THE FLOP: K-K-8
Talk about hitting the jackpot! But we're first in line to bet. So we take our time, pause for a moment, then politely check.
"I'm all in," a man to our immediate left declares. He has 3,000 or so -- and to be honest, we didn't bother to count because there's nothing to think about. The other remaining players don't jump into the trap with him, and fold.
"I'll call -- because I hit it." The table is impressed by our full house. Our opponent has A-6.
"I think he's drawing dead," another player guesses. But we note he could hit running Aces.
ON THE TURN: 9
He didn't. The last card (a 7, as best we recall) doesn't matter. We take him out, and our chip count jumps above 10,000.
After the young man left, one or two players said he learned how to play poker from someone named John -- a man who bet big against us with bad results during the summer. Moral of the story: sometimes aggressive betting can blow up in your face.
Our outcome tonight was a tie for 13th place, practically the same as last night. The end came when we pushed with A-Q, but the board failed to match and another player made two pair.
MINISTRY MOMENT: A player across the table from us asked what we were doing these days. We gave a similar answer from the night before -- explaining the fill-in, low-income job we've been doing. But we added at the end: "God provides."
"He said he would," the man across the table answered. Let's reinforce that point with the words of the apostle Peter. "Whoever serves is to do so as one who is serving by the strength which God supplies...."
But is the end result to exalt ourselves? I Peter 4:11 (NASB) goes on to declare the answer is no: "....so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen."
UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 47 final tables in 116 nights (40.5%) - 10 cashes.
YAHOO POKER TOTAL: $13,944 - unchanged (no play)
NATIONAL LEAGUE OF POKER TOTAL: Five-player sit-n-goes - 2-2-1-0-0. Full tournaments - 3 final tables in 37 games (8.1%), no cashes.
We removed NBC Sports from our computer this week, since the merger with NLOP seems permanent. We're finding NLOP a much more challenging place to play, because the daily tournaments are larger (700 to 800 players at times) and the betting tends to be more daring (all-in early or else).
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