Welcome To UltimateBet!!
2008-02-15 13:33:50
By: Gene Bromberg
When you make your first deposit at an online poker site it's not unlike the first time you walk into a new casino. You have to get used to all the new bells and whistles--how do you bet, where do you go to sign up for a seat, which are the softest games. And as you play you're constantly comparing this new site to ones you might've played at in the past.
Back on February 5th a player named oshyra made his first deposit at UltimateBet and, nine days later, was sitting at a $1/2 No-Limit table, one that happened to include Team UB's Shawn Rice. The cards were dealt and oshyra looked down at pocket Nines. A player named Fox16 raised and oshyra and passiontattoo called.
The flop came down as oshrya probably hoped for--As-10h-9d. A set, and if the raiser had a hand like A-K, a chance to win a nice fat pot. Fox16 checked, oshyra quietly checked, and passiontattoo moved in for his/her last $23.85. When Fox16 called that had to bring a smile to oshrya's face. Sets are gold, right? Time and time again you wait for a middle pair to flop a set and when it does, you lie in wait, waiting to spring the trap. Which oshrya did, raising to $122.40.
When Fox16 moved all-in for his last $170 a tiny warning bell might've gone off in oshrya's mind. "Uh-oh," he might've said, or maybe something stronger. Because when you review the action--two checks, an all-in, a smooth call, a raise, and an all-in re-raise--well, SOMETHING is going on here. It cost oshrya $47.60 to find out what that was, and he made the call.
The 9h on the turn must've made him very, very happy. It's always nice to know that a big pot is about to be pushed your way, and when the Ah fell on the river he probably didn't even notice. You make quads, you figure you're hand's gonna be good, right?
Right. Except on those rare, rare occasions when you're wrong. Like this one. Turns out Fox16 was holding pocket Aces. Both players flopped sets, then oshrya hit his one-outer, and then Fox16 hit HIS one-outer to take down the $387.35 pot.
The reaction around the table was as you'd expect. "Holly (sic) ****" said chkplayer. Passiontattoo, who'd gone bust in a hand where his two opponents BOTH made quads, had a few choice words as well. "Your welcome" was what oshrya managed to say as his hard-won pot fled across the table.
And then it started to dawn on everyone that this hand qualified for the Bad Beat Jackpot. "Is that a bad beat" chkplayer asked, and another chimed in "oh my. Some observers saw what happened and chipped in with "lol" and "oh my" and, inevitably, "can i get a loan?". Even Shawn Rice asked, "What did we win?"
As the old saying goes, to the victor go the spoils. Except for a Bad Beat Jackpot. In that case, the spoils go to the guy who got screwed by the Poker Gods. For his losing hand oshyra won $15,661.11, which should go a long way toward soothing any bad feelings he might've had after losing such a big hand. In addition to the tidy pot he picked up Fox16 won an additional $7830.54, proving that in a Bad Beat Jackpot hand there are enough spoils to share with the victor. The other players at the table each won $1028.60--even passiontattoo, who got doubly crushed in that hand. And everyone playing $1/2 NL player at UB at that moment picked up a few dollars as well.
The only real losers in the hand? I'm not going to mention their names, but two players picked a REALLY bad time to sit out a hand at the winning table. You have to be seated to collect on the Jackpot, and their bathroom break (if that's what it was) came at a very inopportune time. Talk about a bad beat. One of those players left at the end of the hand and another took that seat as the chatbox exploded with talk about the Jackpot. "Did I make it", he asked. I'm sorry to say, the answer is no. If you want a piece of the Bad Beat Jackpot, you have to be in your seat and playing a hand. But don't worry--we're already building up the next Jackpot. It's up to $48,555.74 and rocketing upward with every second that passes. If you want your fair share of the Jackpot, all you need to do is take your seat at one of our tables and hope that someone, hopefully you, gets really, really unlucky.
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