Two big events

We played in our second big Sunday championship in as many weeks tonight -- and at least this one went better than the first one.

For the first time, we qualified for the National League of Poker weekly championship with $1,000 in prizes. It's similar to NBC Sports, only with twice the players -- as the top 2,000 in weekly points made the field. But NLOP has so many more members that qualifying is tougher. Two top-five finishes in daily tournaments almost was not enough!

But we made the game, thanks to modest Saturday night sit-n-go success. And here's how it went....

:02 IN: King-Queen of hearts turn into two pair on the turn. Another player bets along with us, and we take a $640 pot.

:20 IN: We're dealt 10-9. We make top pair on the flop with 5-6-9 -- but then another player pushes all-in. Fearing that player has a higher pair, we fold. And of course, a third 9 shows up on the turn. He takes the pot with 9's and 7's, while we dream of a missed opportunity.

:33 IN: We're dealt A-10 with about 500 chips left. We think its time to take a stand -- but the flop is K-8-10, all diamonds. We don't have a diamond, and decline an all-in challenge. (We don't know what the pusher had.)

:37 IN: Holding K-J with rising blinds, we decide enough is enough. We push all-in with 320 left. A player calls with J-10. But a 10 falls on the flop, and a King never shows.

Final score: 674th out of 1,396 who entered. We're in the top half -- but as a speaker at church said earlier in the weekend, that's simply an "empty platitude."

Now back to last Sunday. We signed up for PokerStars.Net, to take advantage of the "$20,000 Freeroll" advertised on Fox's "Million Dollar Challenge" telecast. That site has a lot more players, a lot more tournaments -- and we're still trying to make sense of it all, to see which areas might offer cash prizes.

As for the tournament: more than 35,500 people entered. In fact, the number kept rising as we were playing. Trouble is, we didn't play long -- as we lost a classic "two pair vs. three of a kind" showdown with a big bet. Poker Stars reported we finished #34,964. Not dead last -- but close enough.