Poker Night 198: No Royalty

What a difference a week makes. Hookahmeup was crowded with five tables of poker players last Thursday night. Today, it barely had three -- as several players apparently are upset with the owner changing the rules for paying the winners. We'll have more on the irony of that protest in another post. But at the tournament....

BLINDS: 100/200

IN THE POCKET: K-Q offsuit

A "bounty tournament" has been declared, because there aren't many players -- and we claimed a 5,000-chip bonus minutes earlier, by knocking out an opponent with a J-7 straight. But we decide not to be too aggressive with this, and simply call. Several players join in.

ON THE FLOP: K-2-7

We have top pair -- but a man to our right may have the same thing. He leads off with a bet of 400. We call, as does a man across the table.

ON THE TURN: Q

Now it's top two pair -- and the man in lead position checks. Thanks very much; we'll confidently bet 1,200. One man out of the hand sounds impressed.

"Raise," says the man across the table. "Four thousand on top."

The man to our right folds. We're puzzled by what the other man has. "I'm probably going to regret this," we say -- but we call, concluding our opponent is bluffing with only one pair.

ON THE RIVER: 8

Our opponent checks. We have to respect his raise on the turn, so we also check and announce our two pair. Trouble is, the man across from us says nothing -- simply throwing down a pair of 2's. Ouch. He had three of a kind on the flop, and actually led us from start to finish.

That big loss lowered our chip stack to 2,750, and we couldn't recover from there. Careful play allowed us to hang around for tenth place -- but we were eliminated short of the final table, when our push with A-8 lost to that same big winner with a full house.

MINISTRY MOMENT: "Nineties rock music -- where has that gone?" Our conquerer asked that question as the Hookahmeup speakers played the Guns N Roses version of "Knocking on Heaven's Door." We don't know where the music went, but we knew the song gave us an opportunity.

"I knock on heaven's door every day," we said to a man on our left. "It's called prayer." The man liked that comment -- so we pushed the issue a little. "Are you a praying person?"

The man said he was, and we think that's a good thing. The Bible certainly recommends it:

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. -- James 5:16

You could pray for victory before a poker tournament, but we make no guarantees God will oblige you. We choose instead to follow the example of King Solomon long ago....

Please make me wise and teach me the difference between right and wrong. Then I will know how to rule your people.... -- I Kings 3:9, CEV

Read on in I Kings 3 and 4, and you'll find God honored Solomon's prayer and blessed him with wisdom. In fact, Solomon gained enough wisdom from God to write most of the book of Proverbs. Wise handling of your cards at a poker table is a relatively small matter, compared to that -- but certainly worth praying about.

UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 83 final tables in 198 nights (41.9%) - 15 cashes.

NATIONAL LEAGUE OF POKER TOTAL: Full tournaments - 79 point wins in 434 games (18.2%), 33 final tables, 2.5 cashes. (We're calling the Wednesday night outcome "half-a-cash" under our appeal is resolved.)

POKER STARS.NET TOTAL: Full tournaments - one "top one percent" finish in 9 games (11.1%). Pretend cash games - $20,294, up $3,995. (That's where our hot streak has been lately, with gains of $800 or more on four occasions.)