Anyway, had some great talks with people at the poker tables today… Could I do poker as a ministry? There is potential, but I’m not sure if I’m good enough yet… at poker, not the ministry part.

The lightning was striking in Vegas too (figuratively). I played a local hold ‘em tourney yesterday morning at The Tuscany Resort & Casino. 30 people at 3 tables. $35 buy in. Made it the final table. Knocked out two peeps, and the top 8 agreed to chop the winnings evenly: $150 each. Woohoo!

Then we wanted to take our minds off Vegas and escape the heat, so we went to a matinée of WALL-E in a nice air conditioned theater. Amazing movie! Chilled at Starbucks afterwards.

There was another poker tourney at 7pm. Was this morning’s win a fluke? I decided to play this evening’s poker tourney. Same $35 buy in. But with 65 people at 7 tables. I played better than I thought I could, and also hung out with some of the same players from this morning. I’ll blog about the actual poker playing later at www.hotdip.us, but long story short I made the final table again but this time as big stack. When there were 3 of us left (me, Rob and Mary), they convinced me to chop the winnings 3 ways: $630 each. Woohoo x2!

Lightning does strike twice.

So the same question comes up from earlier… Could I do poker as a ministry? My answer is still a maybe but more leaning towards yes now. If I played more consistently at these tourneys, one starts to see how loving on these folks is easier cause you’re all sharing is the same passion of poker already.

And on the poker skills front, here’s a little tidbit of info that I’m still trying to wrap my head around. Rob, one of the players that finished in the top 3 with me at last night’s tourney, also played in this week’s World Series of Poker 10k Main Event which is still going on.

It has over 6800 entrants. The top 666 players (a coincidental number I hope) would get part of the $64M prize pool.

Rob finished 660th and took home $21,000. Or to put it another way, he finished in the top 10%.

So on any given day, given optimal conditions, some good cards, a little luck, a little help from Jesus, and enough stamina to last, I could potentially play here and finish in the top 10% too. But that would be getting ahead of myself. I’ll stick to the small tourneys for now, build consistency first, and then we’ll see what happens.

Ok, enough poker talk for now. Today is photography day and a day of hanging out with friends and processing yesterday’s events. In a little bit, we’re gonna drive out to an old deserted ghost town to take photos, maybe head to Red Rocks for a little bouldering (photo from last time), and I won’t be playing poker today!