Poker Night 237: Fives and Some

Due to an unexpected change in plans, we were able to play poker tonight at The Red Barn for the first time since late January. There was a "bonus chip" special on pretzels. We wound up putting a twist on someone's straight....

BLINDS: 25/50

IN THE POCKET: 5-5

We're content to get in small with this small pocket pair. A player in the big blind makes a pot-builder raise to 150 "in the dark," and several of us join in.

ON THE FLOP: 5-3-A

That flop looks nice to us, since someone with pocket Aces probably would have made a bigger pre-flop raise. A man across from us bets 200, as if he has one pair. We raise to 600 with "trip fives." A couple of players call.

ON THE TURN: 4

Uh-oh -- now anyone stubborn enough to play with a 2 has a straight. The man who bet 200 before now bets 1,000. But he wasn't Mr. Big Blind - he's Mr. UTG (under the gun). We conclude from this that he has no better than two pair, so we call. A man to our immediate right calls as well.

ON THE RIVER: A

That's the sort of card we wanted to see, because it gives us a well-disguised full house. Our opponent tosses out another 1000. We're tempted to raise, but instead simply call.

"I've got a straight," the man to our right says as he displays a 4.

"But I've got a full house." That annoys the bettor across from us. He shows a 2-4, which means he made a straight on the flop. We read him wrong, but dared to stick around and won a nice pot anyway.

Trouble is, not much came our way after that. We claimed one more pot, then held on for dear life. With ten players left we pushed with A-Q -- but those cards didn't hit the board, and a man who made a pair of sevens took us out. We fell one player away from the final table.

MINISTRY MOMENT: We showed a man our "Lord's Supper" card protector tonight. "Do you believe that happened?" we asked him. "Is Jesus your Savior?"

The man said Jesus is his Savior. We suspected he might, since he wore a metal cross around his neck -- but that could have been a "bad read" on our part. We'll explain why in an upcoming post.

UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 94 final tables in 237 nights (39.7%) - 15 cashes.