Poker Night 180: Eights Are Enough?

"You just can't play a bunch of...." Well, the man didn't finish that sentence with the word junk. But his point is well taken, when it comes to having success in a poker tournament. Tonight at Lil Kim's Cove, we saw low offsuit cards time after time. So we tried to borrow the Doyle Brunson line, and "go through the window" in one hand....

BLINDS: 100/200

IN THE POCKET: 8h-7d

The closest we've come so far to being serious with a hand was an A-9 which missed on the flop, and we wound up folding. With 6,400 chips, we decide to try these mid-range connectors. A player across the table doubles the bet to 400, and half the table joins in.

ON THE FLOP: Ks-8s-8d

Triple eight should be great! But players are betting all around us -- first 500, then 1,000. We call, and suspect most of the action is based on bluffs.

ON THE TURN: 4h

A seemingly harmless card doesn't slow anybody down. Now the bet to our left is 1,000 straightway. Two other players call, and we feel we must -- but is someone holding a full house here? Could an 8 on the river confirm our suspicions?

ON THE RIVER: As

The man who started the betting before now checks -- but the next man in line goes all-in. A player between us says he "has to call," and says something about there being a lot of options on the board. We thank him for saying that -- because we were about to go all-in for 4,000. But we then take a second look, and realize three spades are showing.

"I'll fold." We decide our three 8's are worthless. It turns out we were right; the first player who pushed made a flush, but the caller had A-8 and hit a full house on the river. We trailed in the hand all along.

We trailed all night long, in fact. We never won a pot, and tried to go all-in with 8-8 and 3,500 left. But big cards fell on the board, and a straight topped us. We did no better than fifth at the table.

MINISTRY MOMENT: "I'll stay out of the hands you're in," the man to our left said to the man to our right before the tournament began. But on the very first hand, they wound up heads-up after the flop.

"I thought you two had an agreement here...." we said mostly as a joke. The man to our left claimed otherwise after winning the hand.

"I don't play favorites when it comes to playing poker."

"So you're like God, then?" we answered. "The Bible says He's no respecter of persons." We repeated that explanation for the man to our right. They didn't really respond to it. If you'd like to respond, leave a comment; we'll have more on this in a future post.

UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 75 final tables in 180 nights (41.7%) - 15 cashes.

We understand a quarterly Big Dog Poker championship game is this weekend, and we qualified for it be placing 33rd in points. But again the tournament is on Saturday -- the Sabbath for us. Too bad.

NATIONAL LEAGUE OF POKER TOTAL: Full tournaments -- 64 point wins in 346 games (18.5%), 27 final tables, 1 cash.

This may have been our best week ever at NLOP, with five point wins in 11 games!

POKER STARS.NET TOTAL: Pretend cash games - $10,723 (unchanged).