Sometimes poker players can make statements without saying a single word. It's up to you to figure out what the message is. We faced a challenge like that at The Sports Page tonight....
BLINDS: 200/400
IN THE POCKET: A-Q offsuit
We won a modest early pot, but haven't had much to play since. Now we sense a chance to make a move -- and after a couple of players call, we raise to 1,000. Three players follow along.
ON THE FLOP: A-J-J
Top two pair looks very nice -- until a woman across the table from us firmly plunks down a gold chip.
"Five-thousand," she declares. Gulp -- that would put us all-in. This woman isn't prone to making large-scale bluffs, so we quickly figure out the message she's sending.
"Only one card would make you do that," we say. "And I'm not going to go there." Yes, we fold top two pair! The other players in the hand don't; they call.
ON THE TURN: K
Uh-oh -- could we be missing out on a straight here?
ON THE RIVER: 10
Yes, we did -- and the woman confirmed our suspicion about her hand, by turning over a Jack for three of a kind. Trouble is, the Tournament Director to our left turns over pocket Kings! Even if we had made the hard-way straight, his full house would have sent us packing. So our fold was the right decision.
We had little choice but to push in the second hour, with 1,000 chips left and K-Q in our possession at the semifinal table. The flop was a gift J-10-9, giving us a straight and a septuple-up (is that a word?!) to 7,000. But another push with A-K was fatal, as the board didn't pair for us and someone else made a pair. We went home in 14th place.
MINISTRY MOMENT: The news was better earlier in the day, as we finished FOURTH in a National League of Poker online tournament with 608 players! It was our second top-six finish in a big-numbers game in six days -- this time earning us money. And after one big pot win, we wrote: "2GBTG".
Your assignment: figure out that chat shorthand. Keep in mind this is a "ministry moment." We'll have the answer in a future post.
UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 97 final tables in 251 nights (38.6%) - 15 cashes.
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