December 24 is a day when the hard-core players show up in a poker room. They probably have no family members nearby to entertain, or ignore Christmas completely. That applies to us on both counts, so we went to Kansas Star Casino's Sunday afternoon game. The turnout was low, which gave us hope. And we won a tournament on this date two years ago. Does that mean momentum?
BLINDS: 50/100
IN THE POCKET: K-K
This "deep stack" tournament allowed us to start with 12,000 chips and very low early blinds. We won one pot with hidden Aces which we never showed, but ups and downs have occurred. We start with about 14,000 and the Dealer button. A young man across from us raises to 400, and we politely call. As we remember it, four players are in.
ON THE FLOP: 9-3-4
Nothing seems noteworthy here. But the young man puts out 1,050 - a large continuation bet. Is he slow-rolling Aces? We're not sure, but our pair is too big to surrender. We call; we recall a third player doing the same.
ON THE TURN: Q
We still have the overpair, and we internally predict the young man will check out of concern for us. Wrong. After thinking for a moment, he bets 2,500.
"Do I want this to be a short game or a long game?" we say aloud as we stare at our cards. The thought of someone having "trip Queens" (three of a kind) is in our mind - but we also have the feeling he's trying to bluff us away.
"I'll call," we decide. The third player folds.
ON THE RIVER: 10
We think this card is meaningless. But what will our opponent think? After a moment, he says, "I'll check to you."
We check as well - and he shows Q-Q! Sure enough, he had trips.
"I wanted you to bet there," he says. If he had bet, our response would have depended on how much he bet. As it is, we lost about 5,000 chips - but careful play prevented a complete wipeout, which probably would have happened on a Wednesday.
We stumbled to the first break at 8,575 chips. But late in the second term, a big comeback happened - as J-10 split a big pot, and pocket Aces (again not shown) won us another won. We recovered to 15,300 chips at the second break.
A big win came in the third term, bringing us to a high of 24,500 and allowing us to reach the semifinal table. But rising blinds and missed flops cost us from there. We finally pushed with K-Q of spades when a woman went all-in with much more. But she had Q-Q, and no King came to save us. (See what we did there?) Our final result was 16th out of 44 players.
MINISTRY MOMENT: There were several, but we're taking this tournament off from those. To find out why, read this article. We'll explain further in our next post.
UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 189 final tables in 522 games (36.2%) - 39 cashes. Experiment cost: Up $75. This probably concludes our tournament play for 2017, so a summary of the year is upcoming as well.
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