Poker Night 370: A Pair Too Small?

It might as well be "off-season" on the local poker circuit.  Attendance is down at the places we visit, perhaps due to the year-end rush of things.

Even though an afternoon storm was long past, only 13 players showed up at The Red Barn for Monday night poker.  With nine reaching the final table, it seems almost as easy as qualifying for a football bowl game.  But we'd still have to earn our way there, against much bigger starting stacks....

BLINDS: 100/200

IN THE POCKET: 3-3

We've lost a couple of early tries, and have about 5,250 chips.  This is the kind of small pocket pair we've seen poker pros fold on TV.  But the blinds are small, and the play at our table of six has yet to become too aggressive.  So we get in for the minimum, and no one raises to cause discomfort.

ON THE FLOP: 4-6-5

People who thrive on high cards wince at flops like this.  But we've been handed an open-ended straight draw.

"Bet the pot," declares a man across the table from us.  After counting the chips in the middle, he bets 600.  We decide to be optimistic and call.  Everyone else bails out.

ON THE TURN: 6

"Continuation," our opponent says.  That means he bets 600 more.

"Call me stubborn," we answer halfway under our breath, daring to call again.

ON THE RIVER: 2

Thank you, Lord!  The straight has come.  Now will the bettor become overconfident?  Maybe not; he bets 500.

"Raise -- one-thousand more," we say.  That brings a quick call.

"I hit trips," our opponent says as he shows a 6.  Too bad for him - yet we fumble our cards a moment while making the announcement.

"Abdul-Jabbars for a straight."  We name 3-3 after the Hall of Fame basketball player who wore that number.

"Nice catch on the river."  Indeed he's right, it was.  Our chip count jumps back above 8,000.

Few good cards came after that, and we were in the middle of a do-or-die hand with 5-5 in the second hour when the "final table" call came from the other side of the room.  Another small pocket pair turned into a big payoff, as a third 5 fell on the flop.  We "quadrupled up" to make the last table with 8,000.

Moments after arriving there, we were dealt A-J -- and when a Jack became a top card on the flop, we went all-in again for our last 6,000.  It held up (thanks to the Ace kicker, topping an opponent's 10) and suddenly we had 34,000 chips.  Then we watched other players knock each other out, until we were in the final four.

At that point A-Q came, and we pushed again.  A man to our right called with J-9 -- but a Jack came up for him, while we missed.  We survived enough close calls, however, to finish in fourth place at The Red Barn for the second time in four weeks.

MINISTRY MOMENT: During one hand, a woman at our table admitted she felt like she was "dealing with the devil."

"I'd rather deal with God than the devil," we told her -- adding the outcome would be "much better."

Yet if we think about it, aren't there moments in all of our lives when we deal with Satan to some extent?  Jesus certainly did while on Earth --and the Lord even gave the devil a physical advantage of sorts:

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.  After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.  The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread." - ???

For a change, we are not mentioning where in the Bible these verses are located.  We invite you to track them down.  Please leave a comment telling us where you found them, and how Jesus proved victorious in this dramatic moment.  We'll compare notes in an upcoming post.

UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 129 final tables in 370 nights (34.9%) - 20 cashes.