"This is an anniversary for me," we told several people at The Red Barn tonight. "Three years ago tonight, I played my first live poker tournament." On that night in 2007, we were pleased simply to avoid being eliminated first at our table. On this night, there were several reasons to smile -- beginning right off the bat:
BLINDS: 25/50
IN THE POCKET: A-4 of hearts
It's the first hand of the night. Why not? We get in. Lots of players do. No raising happens.
ON THE FLOP: 3h-6h-9h
It's tempting to raise now, though -- as a "nut flush" falls right in front of us! The play checks to us. And hoping to maximize our profits, we slow-play and bet 100. Two players call.
ON THE TURN: 9d
A pair is on the board, which might open the door for some concern about a full house. But we bet before, and we raise the stakes now to 400. One player folds; the other calls.
ON THE RIVER: 2c
To be honest, a possible full house isn't even on our minds now. We bet 2,000.
"I'm down," our remaining opponent says -- and we take the early lead.
Several hands later, we made a second flush with hearts. Then at a key moment with about ten players left, our A-Q of diamonds turned into a third flush -- which admittedly annoyed a couple of opponents!
It all helped us reach the final table. But then we tried a couple of risky chases which didn't work, and we wound up fittingly being eliminated by another player with a flush. We finished eighth -- much better than three years ago, but still a bit disappointing in our new drive for top-five scores. (We actually dropped one spot from last Monday night.)
MINISTRY MOMENT: We cracked the top five earlier in the day, at an online tournament -- #5 out of 160 players. One of our opponents had a most unusual name, as this chat sample from the final tables will show:
Dealer: Hell-Bent wins Main Pot ($2090) with Two pair, queens and tens
Me: Tulsa topped by, uh, that other place
Me: (personally, I'd rather bend my ear toward heaven)...
Dealer: Hell-Bent wins Main Pot ($13302) with Three of a kind, sixes
Me: 666 for Hell - figures
Dealer: Djole25 wins Main Pot ($11740)
JAKNIFE92: clever
Dealer: Hell-Bent wins Main Pot ($42304) with One pair, kings
Me: Kinda Biblical
The player with the "H word" in his name never commented on what we wrote -- but you can. What do you say about our chat comments? Our explanation of them will come in a future post.
UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 68 final tables in 167 nights (40.7%) - 11 cashes.
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2 comments:
I like the posts here. They are insightful and very useful in everyday poker game. Thank you for sharing your stories. They mean a lot of poker fans.
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Thanks for the compliment - but if you want to promote your poker products, e-mail us privately about advertising with us: rburkard@yahoo.com .
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