Poker Night 201: Straight Downhill

One mistake can lead to a big disaster -- whether you're playing poker or living an everyday life. We made a sinful blunder first thing this morning, before sunrise. A series of failures followed throughout the day, perhaps as a result. So this hand at The Red Barn tonight probably shouldn't have been a surprise....

BLINDS: 50/100

IN THE POCKET: A-5 offsuit

We're getting promising cards, but they haven't been working out. An A-4 brought an Ace on the flop a few minutes ago, but an opponent's A-K topped us. Now we're in the big blind with about 3,650 chips. We're itching to make a move, but we choose to check when several other players simply call.

ON THE FLOP: J-7-5

We have bottom pair and lead betting position -- but it's not a good flop for betting, so we check. A man across the table bets 200. We call, as do a couple of others.

ON THE TURN: A

Now we have two pair, and sense a need to be aggressive with it. We bet 1,000. A man to our left calls. The player who raised before trades "reading you" stares with us, then decides to fold. We're now heads-up with the caller.

ON THE RIVER: 4

It's still two pair -- but now we sense the need to slow down. Did our opponent call on the turn with something like A-J? We're not sure, so we bet 500.

"Another 1,500," the opponent announces. Ouch -- we only have 1,825 left. But no potential flush is showing on the board, so we conclude this is a "scare-you-away" bluff. With not much hesitation, we call.

"Two pair?!" we say showing our cards.

"Straight!" our opponent says. He has 6-8, made an open-ended draw on the river -- and he had a big enough stack of chips to make a big hopeful call.

Summary: we think we played the hand properly considering the circumstances. Some people might have pushed all-in on the turn, and scared the table off the pot. But that's admittedly not our style, and bigger cards than a 5 were showing to make us more cautious.

That big loss left us with 325 -- and when we saw A-7 in the next hand as small blind, we went all-in. Of course, that didn't work either. The board brought a pair of Jacks, and a woman held a third one to take two players out on the same hand.

MINISTRY MOMENT: We emptied a box of bandages the other day, and spotted a straggler at the bottom -- a small one, which could be a perfect card protector.

"You brought that for good luck?" a man asked before the game.

"No. I brought that to remind me that Jesus can heal the sick." He can even heal sinful wounds you open, when you're careless. If this whole concept puzzles you, we'll explain in an upcoming post.

UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 83 final tables in 201 nights (41.3%) - 15 cashes.