Why were they there, and what does this have to do with poker? The answer to the latter - everything. We'll explain the other part, as we review a memorable Wednesday night at Hollywood Casino Indiana....
BLINDS: 600/1,200 (hand is from memory, as best we recall)
IN THE POCKET: King of clubs-King of spades
It's been an evening with more ups than downs. After winning two of the first three hands, our starting stack of 12,000 chips went to 15,025 - but a big loss late in Hour 1 left us with 9,025 at the break. Then we had a "two-hand slam" (as we call it) in Hour 2, with unshown K-K and a revealed A-K gaining us huge pots.
We reached the final table with 48,900 chips. Now it's Hour 3, with eight players remaining. Nice cards like these call for a raise, and we make it 3,000 to go. Two other players call.
ON THE FLOP: 6h-2h-10c
It looks like the coast is clear. We offer a continuation bet of 3,000. But across from us sits a man who looks amazingly like a church friend from our Wichita years. He has a huge stack - and he goes all-in. The player between us folds.
"Wow," we say. We didn't expect that move, and now we wonder what's up. Does that man have pocket Aces? Did he somehow make two pair out of that flop? A call to find out would take us from a nice stack to the rail.
"The book says to play these," we add.
"I haven't read the book," our opponent responds. Which may explain what he did.
We're in a position to make the money (top three), and don't want to blow it at a moment like this. So....
"I may regret this. But I'm going to fold." We take a moderate-sized loss, to avoid a huge mistake.
Then that man surprises us again. He shows.... 6-6! He bet big, because he had three of a kind. "I had to be careful, with hearts out there."
"Did you have hearts?" another man asks us. We reluctantly admit we did not.
We seldom do this, but we question our opponent's strategy here. If he had called the flop, he could have persuaded us to bet bigger on the turn - and potentially drain us a bit more slowly. But the push was a red flag, and we heeded it. (And another thing: would you have shown your 6-6 afterward?)
Playing it safe and steady worked for us from there. Our stack never became dangerously low, and we had 43,000 chips when the fourth-place player was eliminated. That meant we made the money for the first time in Lawrenceburg.... and the second tournament in a row!
At that point, our strategy changed. We had a regular job to do at 7:30 a.m. Thursday, so we were in a rare situation of attempting to give our chips away. After an "aggressive" gain or two (as that big-stack man put it), we finally pushed with K-J. The big stack had pocket 3's, and they won the race. (He wound up winning the tournament minutes later.)
Our $70 buy-in resulted in a $197 payoff. We drove home at 11:00 p.m., thankful to God for what's turning into a huge October at the table. And we stopped on the way to the freeway at the McDonald's drive-thru - for two victory cheeseburgers we could devour during the drive. So those ketchup stains developed in the dark - and are an unusual sign of poker success.
MINISTRY MOMENT: One man who made the final table was visiting from the Cumberland Lake area of southern Kentucky. He was in our area for the funeral of a friend he made while serving in the Vietnam conflict.
"That's why I have hope in the resurrection," we told him. "The dead will rise again."
The man didn't respond to our idea, and continued to tell war stories. But is that your hope? Do you want to see friends and loved ones again - people who may have died this month, or even decades ago?
Atheism offers no such hope. You're born, you die, and that's that. There was even a branch of Judaism in Jesus Christ's day which lacked that hope....
Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. - Mark 12:18
Their influence apparently remained on some people, even after Jesus was resurrected. An apostle had to reassure believers....
If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. - I Corinthians 15:19
But the good news (otherwise known as gospel) is that a resurrection is coming. It was promised by Jesus while He walked the earth:
For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done. - Matthew 16:27
Why would Jesus hand out rewards to people who are dead? The only way we can appreciate them is by living again.
But here's the thing: the Bible says there will be more than one resurrection of the dead. How can that be? See if you can find it in the Scriptures, and we'll explain in a future post.
UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 207 final tables in 555 nights (37.3%) - 43 cashes. Since marking 500 tournaments last year, we've won money seven times in 55 tries, or almost 13 percent of the time!
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