Poker Day 452: The Road Home?

After a few days doing other vacation-time things, our BPPT ended today on home ground. We entered the Friday 12:00 noon tournament at Arrowhead Poker, which has a reputation of being the biggest of the week there.  But Kansas Star Casino now has its own Friday noon game, so the turnout today was small.

We won a couple of small pots early, but then hopeful pre-flop bets failed miserably.  We survived to the final table on a two-table day, but things came down to this:

BLINDS: 10,000/20,000

IN THE POCKET: K-7 of clubs

We've stayed alive with a couple of pushes so far -- but in both cases, no one called to allow us a big double-up.  Now we have 30,000 chips left, with Big Blind and Small Blind coming in the next two hands.  Bottom line: we're out of time, and have to play anything reasonable.  Like this one -- reminding us of K-7 highway, leading to some of our relatives.

"It's now or never," we say as we push.  Eight players remain.  A man at the opposite corner of the table from us, who's acted like a poker newcomer at times (such as trying to fold the Big Blind when he could check) goes all-in for 40,000.  He has A-2.  The man in the Big Blind simply can't resist, and calls. He has something less than the others (which we don't recall).  We have a horse race.

ON THE FLOP: 6-10-Q

None of these are clubs.  That hurts, but no one's hit a pair yet.

ON THE TURN: 5

Still no matches.  Still two live cards for us.

ON THE RIVER: 5

The only pair is on the board.  The newcomer's Ace is high, so he takes us out and triples his stack.  We leave with another "earned" final table (as opposed to a one-table tournament) -- and we realize if eighth place is our worst showing in a tournament during this "poker tour" week, we've actually had a very good week.

MINISTRY MOMENT: We used a bottle of hand sanitizer as our card protector, explaining to the man next to us we wanted to clean up some of the hands in the tournament.  And oh yes....

"I use this to remind me I need Jesus to clean up my life."

"I like that second part," the man next to us said.  He went on to say he believes in Jesus as his Savior.

"What's Jesus been doing for you lately?" we asked.

The man seemed thrown by this question. "Everything," he said quietly.

Would this kind of question stump you?  We try to thank Jesus in prayer for all the significant events of each day....

...Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. - I Thessalonians 5:18

But what if the events don't always turn out the way we hoped -- like missing the money, after making it three times in a row?  We still look for the positive in it:

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. - James 1:2-3

If you need to learn lessons from a poker loss, go ahead and learn them -- and thank God that you're still able to learn lessons and go forward from there.

UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 166 final tables in 452 games (36.7%) - 29 cashes.