Poker Night 178: The Presence of Royalty

If Wednesday was "not our night" in live poker, Thursday was quite the opposite. Several timely big hands came our way at Lil Kim's Cove -- and they started early:

BLINDS: 100/200

IN THE POCKET: Q-Q

We're first in the betting order -- and one night before in this position, K-K didn't quite work out for us. But we don't change our approach, raising to 600. A few players call.

ON THE FLOP: 10-7-3 (admittedly not sure about the third card)

We have the overpair again -- but this time, with no straight threat here. The play checks to us, and we make a "continuation bet" of 500. It doesn't scare many players away.

ON THE TURN: 10

Now we have two pair -- but the risk of someone else having three of a kind. so when the play checks to us again, we slow down and bet 300. A man to our immediate left looks puzzled, but calls. Two other players do the same. "You have Jacks?!?" someone around the table guesses.

ON THE RIVER: 6 (not exactly sure; something that small)

The play checks to us once more, and we decide to be daring. If someone was hiding a 10, we conclude, they would have raised our weak-looking bet on the turn. So now we plunk down 1,000.

"You're buying me out...." the man to our left says as he folds. The second man folds.

"I've got to see it," the big blind says as he calls.

"Can you top Queens?" we ask. No, he can't -- and we never see what he had. It's a nice gain to about 9,000 chips.

The big hands kept coming from there, even though our stack was often precariously weak. Pocket Kings came at one point, to beat a man holding 7-7. Then at the final table, A-Q won a big pot when an Ace came on the flop and no one else had one. Then pocket Kings came again, to split a big pot with a man who held the other K-K. (We both topped a woman who pushed with Q-Q.)

At last we reached heads-up play, and settled on a split of the prize money with the man who looked puzzled earlier in the tournament. He had a bigger stack, so he took $30 and the runner-up "bucket of beers." We took home $20 -- our third win of money so far in July!

MINISTRY MOMENT: It didn't really happen at Lil Kim's Cove, but an interesting moment occurred during an online tournament in the afternoon. We won an all-in bet over someone named "ThEMaStEr" -- which led to this:

Dealer: flopblogger wins Main Pot ($610) with Straight, ten to ace
Me: (whew) PTL
ThEMaStEr: nh
Me: Thanks
Me: Nothing personal - but Jesus is my Master.
esuom333: about 20 more and ur in there
Me: 20 more all-ins? Hey, why not? :-)
esuom333: just not through me and amen to that

Can you say "amen" as well? We welcome your comments on that exchange; we'll share more on it in an upcoming post.

UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 74 final tables in 178 nights (41.6%) - 15 cashes.

NATIONAL LEAGUE OF POKER TOTAL: Full tournaments - 59 point wins in 335 games (17.6%), 26 final tables, 1 cash.

POKER STARS.NET TOTAL: Pretend cash games - $10,723, up $635.