Poker Night 158: Turned Too Soon

Poker rooms and casinos have dealers on the payroll, who keep order and sometimes act as referee. Free tournaments in local bars usually don't have that, and the players take turns dealing. Sometimes that can be a bad thing, as we found out tonight at Lil Kim's Cove....

BLINDS: 5,000/10,000

IN THE POCKET: K-9 offsuit

We've reached the final table (for the second time today; more on that below) -- and we're in the big blind, with a healthy stack of 75,000 chips. The play calls to us, and we check.

ON THE FLOP: 5-5-7 (memory a little fuzzy on the third card)

We check, as do the three other players in the hand. (Only six remain at this point.)

ON THE TURN: K

With two pair, we try to claim the pot by betting 20,000.

"Eight more," says a man to our left. He raises 40,000 and puts himself all-in. Two women then fold.

"All right," says the dealer nonchalantly, without looking at us....

ON THE RIVER: 9

She turns over the next card before we can call the all-in bet! We were prepared to call before seeing this card. Now our two pair has improved, and we're glad about it.

"Well, I'll call," we say.

"That card ought to be shuffled back into the deck," our opponent notes. Under our usual rules, he's correct. We probably could have appealed to the Tournament Director and raised a fuss, but we accept this because we still feel confident about our King.

ON THE RIVER II: Q

We go ahead with the call, then declare: "I have Kings with a 9."

"Kings with an Ace." Ouch -- our opponent wins.

Because of inattentive dealing, our opponent made a huge chip gain. Our big stack was cut to 15,000. We were eliminated a few hands later, when A-4 failed to pair on the board. And even though we finished sixth for the second live tournament in a row, we were left to mumble about what might have been.

MINISTRY MOMENT: We did even better earlier in the day, at a National League of Poker online tournament. For the fourth time in as many weeks, we reached the heads-up final twosome -- and this exchange occurred when we took out the third-place player:

Imamirage: nh
Me: Thanks (handshake)
imamirage: what is ptl
Me: Praise the Lord.
Dealer: flopblogger wins Main Pot ($12000)
Me: Is Jesus your Lord?
Dealer: flopblogger wins Main Pot ($68720)
imamirage: yeah
Me: Good!

Mr. Mirage admitted later he wasn't very good with acronyms. But he was good in heads-up poker -- entering with a 2-1 chip lead, and defeating us after about five minutes. Here's hoping he praised Jesus for his $10 win.

UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 62 final tables in 158 nights (39.2%) - 11 cashes.

NATIONAL LEAGUE OF POKER TOTAL: Five/six-player sit-n-goes - 3-8-3-1-0. Full tournaments - 37 point wins in 230 games (16.1%), 16 final tables, 1 cash.

POKER STARS.NET TOTAL: $11,733 - down $1,240.