A Bad Beat Never Felt So Good
2008-05-12 17:34:06
By: Gene Bromberg
Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Like you, for instance. You're playing poker and look down at two Tens. Nice, a pair, and you raise. A player two to your left puts in a big re-raise and leave you with that age-old decision--call, raise, or fold. Throwing away Tens doesn't appeal to you, nor does pushing with a hand that might be a huge dog or slightly the better in a coin flip. So you call, hoping to flop a set and giving yourself room to manuever should the board be favorable.
And then the dealer spreads the flop and it reads A-10-10. Oh boy. Quad city. You check, praying the other guy has AK. He checks too. The turn is a deuce and you decide to seed the pot with a timid-looking bet. He makes an even shakier raise and you choose to call, hoping to hand him more rope. You barely even register that the river is another Ace as you push forward a stack of chips. And on this day the Poker Gods seem to have your back, because he raises you back. And all that remains is for you to do a little bit of playacting--rubbing your brow, a pained frown, a sigh--before you say, "All-in".
When he snap-calls you aren't surprised--if he has AK he's made the best full house. But when instead he turns over pocket Aces, his quads are better than yours, you aren't surprised. You aren't shocked. This goes beyond shock. You're dumbfounded. Gobsmacked. And that's when you finally find enough strength to slap your cards down on the felt and shout. "Quad Tens, baby! I lose! I LOSE!!!"
And you say this because you're playing at a Bad Beat Jackpot table, where a player who loses with a monster hand becomes a big winner. At these tables an extra rake is taken an added to the Jackpot, and when it hits you'll never see a player so happy to lose his stack.
Of course UltimateBet has it's own Bad Beat Jackpot tables and every week or so some fortunate soul gets coolered with quad Eights or better to win a massive amount of cash. This past Friday a player named "tessthemess" was the victim at a Bad Beat Jackpot table and took home $56,137.66. Not a bad payday for a single hand. And of course some of that money gets spread among the other players at the table, even the lucky idiot who won that insignificant-in-comparison "main" pot.
Winning a Bad Beat Jackpot takes luck--bad luck, and lots of it. Back on March 25th a player named dhc2lovr won the Jackpot when his quad Aces were beaten by a Royal Flush. I don't need to tell you that losing a hand like that is sick--but the $171,498.31 dhc2lovr won from the Jackpot probably helped ease the pain...especially as he was playing at a .50/1 Limit Hold-Em table. The pot he lost ended up totally $19. Instead he won $171,498.31. Uh, wow.
But "wow" doesn't quite suffice for what happened on May 6th. On that day dhc2lovr was again playing at a Bad Beat Jackpot table. Once again he reached the river holding a certifiable monster hand--quad Tens. Once again, his opponent incredibly had an even bigger one--quad Queens. And that meant dhc2lovr had hit the Bad Beat Jackpot a second time, to the tune of $145.899.23. That's $317,397.54 for losing two hands that in other circumstances would've merely made for a couple of bad beat stories.
After his wins dhc2lovr sounded like someone confident in his ability to get totally screwed by the deck: "I had won a bad beat before but I really didn't feel there was any reason why I couldn't win again," he said. "I felt I had the same chances as anyone else to win and the fact that I had won it before made no difference."
Statisically speaking he's right--winning a Bad Beat Jackpot once doesn't make it any more or less likely that you'll hit it again. We live in an indifferent Universe where mathematics and logic hold sway. That said, I don't know that I'd be walking under any ladders with dhc2lovr or breaking any mirrors in his house. Just in case bad luck DOES exist. Then again, with his kind of bad luck you'd probably walk under a ladder and then get hit by a car...driven by Scarlett Johansson. Who would insist on nursing you back to health, no matter how long it takes. Luck, as is the case with so many aspects of life, is all a matter of perspective.
Unless you're playing at one of UltimateBet's Bad Beat Jackpot tables. Because while dhc2lovr took home a six-figure sum, don't feel too bad for the player who won the pot but "lost" the jackpot. Because that player won $72,949.61 in addition to the money in the pot. And the other 117 players who were sitting at table of the same limit divvied up $145.899.23 of their own. At our Bad Beat Jackpot tables, everyone is a winner. Especially the loser.
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