Poker Night 216: Club-Hopping

Some people like to play "power poker," making big bets to win pots. But Texas Hold 'em is a game where sometimes it can pay to look wimpy. It worked for us more than once tonight at Lil Kim's Cove....

BLINDS: 50/100

IN THE POCKET: K-J of clubs

We're in third position at a seven-player table with fairly nice cards. We call, prepared to bet behind a raise. but no one raises, and nearly the entire table is in.

ON THE FLOP: 2c-3c-8c

A flop that's almost a dream come true! (Almost, because Ac would give us the "nut flush.") A man ahead of us checks, and we offer a tantalizing small bet of 250. A man across from us raises to 1,000. Another man joins us in calling.

ON THE TURN: 8d

This complicates matters a bit. We didn't think of it at the time, but what if that man across from us had two pair on the flop? He could well have a full house now. We're really not sure what he has (best guess: Ace of clubs), so we check. Both our opponents check.

ON THE RIVER: 5s

We check again. The man across from us bets 1,000 -- and now we have the feeling he's trying to buy the pot. The player between us folds, and we have little fear in calling.

"Do you have a flush?" we ask. "Because I do." We show ours. He doesn't show us, saying only that he didn't have a flush. It's a nice gain of thousands of chips.

The evening was spiked with nice hands for us -- a straight at one point, 10-10 twice to eliminate players, K-K once to win a race against A-J and knock out someone else. But we folded A-K against two players' big all-in bets, and missed out on a golden opportunity to eliminate more.

We reached the final table with about 45,000 chips -- but rising blinds and weak hands whittled us down from there. A big-blind last stand with J-4 fell short. But we still finished fifth, for our best live tournament since Thanksgiving week.

MINISTRY MOMENT: We happened to wear a "faux fraternity" shirt from our college years to the tournament tonight, and the conversation turned from there to a discussion of Freemasonry.

"You don't want to get the 33rd degree," a player said as he held up pocket 3's he'd folded. "You know why? How old was Jesus when He died?" The man asked us this question, knowing about this blog and our ministry.

"History says He died at 33 1/2," we answered. The man then said the 33rd degree in Freemasonry is honorary only, because that number is considered bad luck.

This claim was news to us. What do you think of it? We'll offer our thoughts in an upcoming post.

UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 88 final tables in 216 nights (40.7%) - 15 cashes. Heads-up: 7-11.

NATIONAL LEAGUE OF POKER TOTAL: Full tournaments - 99 point wins in 525 games (18.9%), 40 final tables, 2 cashes.

We finished fifth Wednesday in a qualifying tournament for the monthly "Poker Studs Championship." That puts us in the running for big bucks, when we play for (giggle) Stud of the Month on the 29th!

POKER STARS.NET TOTAL: Full tournaments - 3 top ten percent finishes in 14 games (21.4%), no cashes. Pretend cash games - $28,674, up $1,825.

To our pleasant surprise, our Internet service was restored in time to play Sunday's Million Dollar Challenge Freeroll. But we won only one pot, and were bounced in 30 minutes -- #25,725 out of nearly 42,000 players.

YAHOO POKER TOTAL: Pretend cash games - $13,969, up $25.

Huh? Back at Yahoo? Yes, we returned for the first time in about a year -- playing at a library because our home Internet connection was down, and so downloads are required to play. Have to stay in practice, you know.