BLINDS: 300/600
IN THE POCKET: K-10 of clubs
At this point, the ice cream coupon is secured. It's the middle of Hour 2, after we overcame an early setback with pocket Kings to close Hour 1 at 13,475 from a starting 12,000 chips. We tend to fold K-10 when blinds go up and things get risky. But these are suited, so we try them. Two other players at the table of eight call.
ON THE FLOP: 10-10-K
No clubs. But no problem! We build an instant full house! A man to our right plays first, and offers 1,200. This reminds us of our last tournament in Kansas City.
"I can do 12," we say matter-of-factly. The third man can't; he folds.
ON THE TURN: 7
We doubt this helped our opponent at all. This time he checks. We want him to stick around and keep feeding our beast, so we make a hesitant-looking bet of 1,500. He calls. We're glad about it.
ON THE RIVER: 3
We should have the TV "check-mark" at this point. Now our opponent is ready to bet again - but backs off a little, to 1,100.
"No," we say. "Not enough." Forgetting it's an ice cream day, we raise to 3,100. Will our opponent take the dare? After a moment.... he does!
Then we remember the famous words a man said to oust us at a Alabama poker night years ago. "I flopped it," we say. When we show the full house, our opponent folds without showing.
"Was it that ice cream?" another player asks.
"I haven't eaten the ice cream yet," we answer with a smile.
Thankfully, the ice cream had to wait a long while. Big timely cards kept coming our way - never pocket Aces, but several winning A-K's and a couple of successful flushes. We ballooned to 36,200 after two hours of play. then reached the final table at 42,200.
Marvelous moments kept happening there. Even though we fell to 32,200 at the three-hour break, we won a sidepot with A-10 and made a big flush with 6 of hearts. Then we had three hands of 3-3 4-4 and 3-3! The first pocket pair was blown up for a full house on the river, but the other two led to double-ups - and we survived to the final three, to make the money!
After a few hands of chip shuffling, we asked a question. "Is it time to say 'chop'?" The other two men agreed to that. We wound up with $360 - seven times the $70 buy-in! We were thankful for God's guidance in making money. And since it's January, we were able to drive the free ice cream all the way home to enjoy later.
MINISTRY MOMENT: When we turned over 6-6 at the final table, one talkative opponent declared: "Satan's hand."
"Actually, that's three sixes," we said in correction.
"You'll need three sixes," he predicted in response.
That man turned out to be wrong, as the 6 of hearts led us to a winning flush. But this is a reminder that some people don't know the Bible as well as they think. Let's review his reference....
Wisdom is needed here. Let the one with understanding solve the meaning of the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. His number is 666. - Revelation 13:18 (NLT)
Many people have made guesses about what 666 means. We will not do that here. But the prophecies of Revelation indicate the future "beast-man" will require everyone to worship it, and receive some kind of mark for trading (verses 15-17). But believers in the true God should do something else....
….This means that God's holy people must endure persecution patiently and remain faithful. - Revelation 13:10 (NLT)
You don't have to wait for an end-time beast to come to do these things, you know. The best time to start practicing these traits is now:
If we endure hardship, we will reign with him. If we deny him, he will deny us. If we are unfaithful, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny who he is. - II Timothy 2:12-13 (NLT)
By the way, there's one other 666 in the Bible - the size of a Israelite family (Ezra 2:13). We didn't find any 66's in the text. But there's one big overarching one - as the standard Bible has 66 books! Can you name all of them? And even more importantly, have you read through all of them?
UPDATED POKER SCOREBOARD: 214 final tables in 566 games (37.8%) - 46 cashes. Since we crossed the 500-tournament mark in April 2017, we've had 31 finals in 66 tries.... not far from 50 percent!
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