A Bad Beat Story All Want to Hear
2007-10-20 13:35:36
By:
Gene Bromberg
So I'm playing in a
poker tournament the other day and I keep getting involved in big pots. Not hard to do when my huge hands kept butting heads with slightly-less-huge hands. I stacked a guy with KK when the flop came K-J-4 and he had pocket Jacks. I was dealt Kings again and, again, felted a guy who pushed with pocket Jacks. With the field reduced by two-thirds I was right near the top of the leaderboard. I was in the Zone. I had it goin' on.
And I was poised to take the chip lead when I lured yet another sucker holding JJ into an all-in confrontation with me holding pocket Queens. This time, alas, he flopped a Jack, and I didn't get any help on the turn or river. Ah well.
A few hands later I incredibly ended up all-in AGAIN with KK vs. JJ. He flopped a Jack. I didn't catch. And my stack was halved.
OK...four times I've had my opponent completely crushed. Three times the other dude flopped a set. True, I won one of those hands, but if each of those hands had gone according to plan I would've had a massive stack. Instead I was just below average.
Time to put my grinding helmet on and get to work. I still had chips. My table was loose and passive and I figured I could impose my will and rebuild my stack. And that's when I looked down at pocket Aces.
You gotta love it when you're holding Aces and there's a raise and re-raise ahead of you. I put virtual hands behind my stack and pushed it all in the middle, and the second raiser called. With pocket Eights. Nice call, sir.
The first card I see on the flop is an Eight. Before I can say, "Are you (deleted) KIDDING me?" I see that there's an Ace as well. Whew. For the fourth time my opponent has flopped a set against my overpair, but twice now I've hit a set as well. Pretty sick.
I was still congratulating myself on my good luck when the river was dealt. Of course I
saw that the case Eight had hit on the river, but it wasn't until the pot was pushed the other way and the pop-up box appeared to say that I'd finished 421th that the enormity of the injustice hit me. "WHAT!" I screamed, nay, shrieked. This time I did say, "Are you (deleted) KIDDING me?", followed by a great many more (deleted) words.
One-outer on the river. Enough to make you sick. Instead of sitting near the top of the leaderboard, I was pacing around my flat looking for something satisfying to break. I really need to buy some expensive vases just for those occasions.
Bad beats are part of
poker. Even if you're a 90% favorite to win a hand, you're still gonna lose one time out of ten. It happens. True, it happens to me (and you) far more than those suckout artists who think Q-10 is a good hand to call an all-in with.
Well, here at UltimateBet we're offering our player a chance to turn the most egregious bad beats into a big-time score. We're offering
Bad Beat Jackpot tables where a piece of each pot is set aside to build up the size of the prize pool. If you're playing at one of our Bad Beat tables and you lose with quad Eights or better, you'll have a bad beat story for the ages. And a big chunk of change for your bankroll.
And it's not like you personally have to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune to pick up some bad beat bread. When the jackpot is hit 25% remains in the kitty to fund the next jackpot. Ten percent goes to the house, and the rest of the cash goes to the players. The player suffering the bad beat gets half, the malevolent jerk who won the hand gets a quarter, and the other players at the table who particpated in the hand get a cool grand apiece. The remaining 25% is then divvied up among ALL the players who are sitting at Bad Beat Jackpot tables at that limit and game type. That gives you an even better chance of picking up some quick cash without even having to witness a gut-twisting beat.
The first Bad Beat Jackpot went all the way up to $112,855.50 before an unlucky soul named Peter Gunzzz suffered a horrific beat. One can only hope that the $38,678.03 to soothe his tortured soul. Oh, how I wish there had been a pot of gold at the end of my own dark rainbow. All I got was a beer and a chance to yell at my cat.
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