Poker Night 291: Grand Opening

For some big-time poker players, timing is everything -- not only inside a hand, but in a tournament overall.  Gus Hansen writes in one of his books that he tries to dominate the final hands of a day, because opponents are afraid of getting busted and not advancing 24 more hours.  We adjusted that way of thinking in a hand tonight at Lil Kim's Cove....

BLINDS: 25/50

IN THE POCKET: 9-4 of spades

It's the first hand of the night.  We're sitting "one behind the dealer."  And in fairly typical fashion, no one raises in front of us.  It's like a "warm-up hand," and we see no reason to upset that with small suited cards.  We call, and nearly everyone at the table of seven is in.

ON THE FLOP: Qh-4c-Ks

The players check ahead of us -- but we hit the flop, so why should we wait?  We bet 150, which is enough to attract several investors.  (But it's not enough to coax a raise from someone with a bigger hand.)

ON THE TURN: 5s

The pair of 4's looked weaker, but our chances for a flush now are stronger.  The table checks in front of us again -- and this time we make a "continuation bet" of 200.  A few players call, but this time a man to our immediate right raises 1,000.

We stop a moment to consider this.  We bought a soda to increase our starting chip stack to 7,000.  This raise is big, but not overwhelmingly big.  We decide to give it a shot, and call.  As we recall, two other players call.

ON THE RIVER: As

"Flush!" a player to our left announces.  (So much for the element of surprise.)  The players in front of us check again -- and that's something we hoped to see.  Now we bet 2,000.  The first two players unhappily fold -- but the man who raised on the turn calls.

"Do you have a flush?" we ask him.  "Because I do."

We show our spades, and they're good enough!  The other man has 5-5, which explains why he raised on the turn.  But running spades to the river top him, and we more than double our chip stack.

A pair of 5's won us another pot in the first hour, and cautious play outside of that brought us to the one-hour break at 14,500.  But a big loss early in hour two led to us pushing all-in under the gun with K-J of diamonds.  Two players called -- but it turned out everyone missed the board, and King-high was good enough to keep us in!  We held on from there, reaching our first final table in six weeks.

But the draw for dealer at the final table put us in the big blind immediately, forced to go all-in with only 3,500 chips left.  We had J-9 and found a Jack on the river -- but a woman with J-Q had a better kicker and kicked us out.  It was a ninth-place night, but one hand at a final table is still a "final table" for us.

MINISTRY MOMENT: The blinds were 2,000/4,000 on that last hand.  A woman to our left with a huge stack of chips noticed we were 500 chips short of the big blind, and threw in 500 more to make up the difference.  Trouble was, the dealer kept throwing the green 500 chip back at her.

"You can't do that," he said.  (We're honestly not sure if that's allowed in casinos or not; if you know, please leave a comment.)

"But she's trying to be giving," we said in the woman's behalf.  Then we turned to her and added, "Giving is a nice thing to do.  It's better to give than to take."

Then we realized the game we were playing.  "Unless you're in the middle of a pot; then you might change things."

That brought a smile to the woman's face.  Away from the table, we think giving is much more likely to bring a smile to God's face.

Freely you have received, freely give. -- Matthew 10:8

We're actually taking these words of Jesus out of context a bit -- because He said them while instructing His disciples to perform miraculous acts while preaching the gospel of the kingdom of heaven.  But other New Testament passages support the giving principle:

Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.  Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. - II Corinthians 9:6-7

As it happened, a man came to our poker table during the game with what apparently was a fundraising promotion.  Buy a raffle ticket for four dollars and you can get a chili dog dinner, while also paying for a similar dinner for a homeless person.  On top of that, one raffle ticket was rewarded with 5,000 chips.  We didn't carry enough cash to take part in that.  But it shows some poker players do have a giving spirit -- outside a tournament, at least.

UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 106 final tables in 291 nights (36.4%) - 17 cashes.  Next week's live poker schedule will be different for us; you'll see what we mean.

NATIONAL LEAGUE OF POKER TOTAL: Full tournaments - 191 point wins in 818 games (23.3%), 66 final tables, 7 cashes.  We scored a top-40 finish earlier in the day, at a tournament with 645 players.

POKER STARS.NET TOTAL:  Pretend cash games - $71,368, up $5,030.  We topped the $70,000 mark with a big cash game week.  A Monday night "lightning round"  gave us an increase of $3,595.