The World Poker Tour Amateur Poker League is where people play in Wichita, if they don't have money to burn at local poker rooms or the nice new casino down the highway. In other words, it's free poker. Sadly, there's no prize money for daily winners -- simply points for advancing up the WPT ladder to potential paydays online.
We walked into a small corner bar called Betty's Runway Sunday afternoon for the second game of their weekly doubleheader. After taking a few moments to be registered, we went to a table of seven and got down to business....
BLINDS: 100/200 (the starter level here)
IN THE POCKET: 4-4
Everyone starts on level ground in this league -- 10,000 chips, with no bonuses for buying drinks. We won an early pot by making a flush on the turn. Now we hope to add some more, starting this hand with about 11,000. We call with a small pocket pair; about half the players at this rather tight table are in.
ON THE FLOP: 4-7-K
Three times four equals bet some more! The play checks to us, and we offer 600. That runs some people off - but a man to our right decides to double to 1,200. We call, and we're wondering.
ON THE TURN: 10
Our opponent checks. We want to get a sense for what he has, so we bet 1,000 more. This time he simply calls. Our concern is that he might have something like K-K.
ON THE RIVER: K
Now we've advanced to a full house -- but if our opponent has a King, he could have a "bigger boat" than ours. He thinks it over for a moment, then sets out 1,600. An all-out push might have run us off, but we can afford this test.
"I'll call," we say. "Do you have a full house?"
We show our cards -- and he does not! He has K-J. We win a big pot, and become the "high hand" of the moment in the tournament with potential bonus points at stake. (We were topped later, though.)
We made several big hands in the first hour of play, doubling our holdings to more than 23,000 at the break. Then Q-Q paid off big in the second hour, and we advanced to the final table. Others faded from there -- and by the end of Hour 2 we were heads-up with the Tournament Director for first place!
Trouble was, the Director had a much larger stack than ours. We escaped two all-in moments, but not a third; 6-3 of clubs wound up losing to an eight-high straight.
"Beginner's luck!" one bystander said of our afternoon.
"He's no beginner," the Director concluded. Right he was. We drove home second out of 22 players, feeling satisfied -- but wondering if a strictly-amateur poker league is the right level of play for us.
MINISTRY MOMENT: We took a "Praise Jesus" lapel pin for our card protector, and showed it to a young woman at the final table. She told us Jesus is her Savior, but admitted she and her lover (we'll assume her husband) are having "a hard time going back to church."
Saturday seemed to be a good day for them -- and we noted a couple of congregations in the city which have Saturday services. Actually, we think more of them should:
Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the LORD your God has commanded you. - Deuteronomy 5:12When God gave Moses these instructions, the nation of Israel was not keeping Sunday. It was taught to figure the calendar differently....
....The seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns, so that your male and female servants may rest, as you do. - Deuteronomy 5:14So we'll dare to ask: if you're worshiping God on a different day of the week - which one and why? We'll dig deeper into this topic in a future post. (We're still waiting on the mover to bring our computer from Georgia, so it might be a few days.)
UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 139 final tables in 403 nights (34.5%) - 21 cashes.
Back in Georgia and Alabama, second place probably would have brought us a prize of some sort. Not here - so we may have to recompute how we define a "cash."
No comments:
Post a Comment