With Waldenbooks closing stores across the U.S., we bought our first poker book for the small blind.... oops, we mean half-price. It's a Gus Hansen book in which he analyzes most of the hands he played to win a big tournament -- and one line struck us about 4-2 of clubs: "This is the name of the game."
Armed with this knowledge, we went to Lil Kim's Cove tonight. Would Gus be right?
BLINDS: 50/100
IN THE POCKET: Q-4 of clubs
Well, it's half of Gus's hand. We're in the big blind and no one raises around the table, so we check.
ON THE FLOP: 4-2-2 (one 2 is a club)
For many players, this flop would be ugly. Not for us. With two pair, we bet 400. A man to our left laughs at this.
"You won't let me play a hand," he says shaking his head as he folds. But another player calls.
ON THE TURN: 5 (not a club)
Our memory is admittedly a bit fuzzy about what happens from here. But we believe we bet 400 again, on the theory our opponent couldn't possibly be playing cards this low. Yet he calls again.
ON THE RIVER: 7
As we recall, we checked here. Our opponent does as well.
"I have a 4," we say reluctantly. But that's good enough; our opponent concedes without showing cards.
The man who laughed at our bet on the flop can't believe we played those cards. So we quoted the Gus Hansen line.
"If you're playing like Gus Hansen -- he'll play about everything."
We won the next hand as well with two clubs. Everyone folded after our Jack paired on the flop, and we made a bet.
A few big hands came our way in the first hour, and we had 16,000 chips at the break. But we lost some big hands after that -- and even the skeptical man beat us with pocket Aces, when we had A-6 and an Ace came on the flop. Our final result was 14th place, dropping out at the semifinal table when our 8 made top pair on the flop but an opponent hit running K-Q for two pair.
MINISTRY MOMENT: "You always bring something different," the man who knocked us out said before tonight's game began. He noticed we brought a small candle in a glass holder.
"I brought that to remind me that I'm supposed to be a light to the world. I read that in a book." Not a Gus Hansen book -- but the Bible, quoting Jesus in Matthew 5:14. The other man didn't know the source of the quote, and had nothing to say after we mentioned it. (He even had a cigarette lighter, and didn't light our candle.)
UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 50 final tables in 128 nights (39.1%) - 10 cashes. We're taking back the second-place "cash" from Monday night, after deciding only actual payouts should count.
NATIONAL LEAGUE OF POKER TOTAL: Five-player sit-n-goes - 3-7-3-1-0. Full tournaments - 8 final tables in 104 games (7.7%), no cashes.
We had no play at Yahoo or PokerStars.Net in the last week -- but we had a strong 12th-place finish in a 514-player tourney at NLOP Sunday evening.
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Tournament is A competition among players for a set duration of time, often with widely varying rules.
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