It finally happened!
After 1610 hours of play, I was finally involved in a bad beat jackpot
in live poker! I’ve never seen a bad
beat happen in a brick and mortar casino, and in the millions of hands I’ve
played online, I’ve only seen it happen once.
Now, though, I can claim I’ve seen not one straight flush (a rarity in
and of itself), but two straight flushes in the same hand; one higher than the
other.
I got the chance to play last Friday night. The wife and I were not going out, as it was
my son’s birthday and he wanted to have a sleepover. After a nice Friday dinner at home, clearing
the table of dirty dishes, and getting the kids settled in with a movie I found
my way out to garage and was soon traveling along the I-95 corridor headed
north to Baltimore’s Horseshoe. After an
uneventful trip, I was seated immediately.
- I called a PFR with T9dd, raised the flop $15 cbet to $45 on a J 9 6 dd board and got shoved on for $90 total by 96hh. Didn’t get there on any of my 1000 outs… Okay – 16+ outs (counting the backdoor straight), but still – I run good!
- Then, I called a $12 PFR with JTo in the BB along with 6 other players, called a $25 weak cbet on a J 5 7 cc board along with 5 other players and open shipped a turned top two but was called by a (IMO terribly played) bottom set of 5’s for around $120.
Down a buy-in from the aforementioned hands and a few
miscellaneous speculative calls, I rebought to a full $300 and sat patiently,
waiting for the hands that would never happen…
Mid-way through the session, a 20-something sits down to my
left, clearly having a good time during what turns out to be his friend’s
bachelor party. 2 hands into his session,
he decides to open limp what turns out to be 34ss. I must have checked my crappy, unmemorable 2
cards in the BB, but the flop comes 5s6s7d.
The action went bet, raise, re-raise, all in for $96 from the BTN. After a hesitation, my partying friend
finally called for the remaining $16 from his re-raise. I figured the button for the flopped
straight, but didn’t figure the kid for the dumb end of it. Well, they flip their cards, and I realize
what bad shape my friend is – not only is he crushed by the better straight,
but his opponent has him covered for all but 1 card in his flush outs – he needs
to hit a 2s to win the hand.
The dealer doesn’t wait – he immediately throws out the 7s
to make both hands straight flush. I
instantly realized – a genuine bad beat!
Booyah!
Unfortunately for the two guys (and the rest of the table),
the ‘Shoe does bad beats a bit differently, where they pay $200 for Jacks full
beaten (I was on the receiving end of that once, see here http://lowstakeshands.blogspot.com/2016/05/a-good-beat-bad-beat-little-zeebo.html),
$400 for Queens full (ironically, a player at the table behind me hit that
moments before we hit ours), Kings full through Aces full of Tens for $750, Aces
full of Jacks+ for $2500, and quads beaten gets $10k divided among the
following: $500 to each player, 70% remaining to the loser and 30% remaining to
the winner. So, I got paid the table
share, $500, and the loser / winner got $4200 & $1800 respectively. Anywhere else, we all would have received
$10k+, and the winner / loser would have gotten quite a bit more… Oh well.
Good times at the ‘Shoe!