Bad Beats We've All Known
and Loved
31 January 2005
By Mark Pilarski
Dear Mark,
Get this for a bad beat in a Texas Hold'em
tournament I recently played in. With nine
players remaining I'm dealt a pair of Kings in
the hole. The flop comes King, 3, 3. Naturally I
go "all in." Across from me a player was holding
6, 5, suited, then matches one of the 3's. Then
he catches on the turn a four of hearts, then
the five of hearts on the river to give him a
straight flush. Out of the tournament, and out
of the money (only the top eight got paid). Now
that's a bad beat. Tom A.
By policy and design, Tom, I steer clear of
"bad-beat" stories. I'm sharing yours because it
illustrates two points. What a bad beat is, and
of course, a bad beat story.
So what counts as a "bad beat"? First, the
obvious: you have to lose the hand. But
secondly, you lost in a spectacularly unlikely
way when you were the odds-on favorite to win
it. With your full house on the flop, you
couldn't possibly have been expected to do
anything less than go "all in," putting all your
chips into the pot. The bad beat was that the
other dude got amazingly lucky, and you lost in
a way that seemed inconceivable until you saw it
happen. Getting KO'ed from the tournament and
being one slot short of prize money, well, I'd
call that a Class A bad beat.
Then there is the ever-popular "bad-beat story"
contest. Most gamblers, especially (but not
exclusively) inexperienced players, love to
compete with stories about how rotten their luck
was. I've listened to countless gambling
anecdotes over the years, and I'm confident I've
heard or seen them all, and, Tom, they are not
exclusive to the game of poker: The dealer who
got a seven card 21 at blackjack; red and white
7's on the payline; the blue seven one line
below on a progressive slot machine; and the
dreaded back door cover in sports, where a
last-second touchdown beats you on the spread.
I've taken enough bad beats in
sports that it finally put me in therapy.
I do realize that some readers of this column do
enjoy a good bad-beat story. Heck, we've all, on
occasion, lost so improbably that we feel
compelled to tell the story, but, some readers
would just as soon watch paint dry for four
hours as to read another. I'll keep listening
because it's part of my job description, but
readers, if I fail to chronicle your bad-beat
narrative, please don't take it personally.
Dear Mark,
Please describe the different types of straights
in poker; for instance, drawing to an inside
versus an outside straight. Sandy R.
A lot of people don't quite understand the
difference between drawing to an "inside
straight" and to an "outside straight. And yet,
Sandy, it's pretty straightforward (pun
intended). An inside straight is one in which an
"inside" card is absent, such as the nine in
this example (7,8,10,J), whereas, an outside
straight is one in which an outside card is
missing, such as the six or jack in this case
(7,8,9,10). The latter is open-ended because it
consists of four consecutive cards (none of them
an ace) and can be completed at either end.
Drawing to an outside straight is a cut above
drawing to an inside straight, because there are
eight ways to complete the outside straight and
only four ways to spiff up an inside one.
Gambling quote of the week: "Many new slot
machines don't even have handles, just buttons
to push. Should we now call them
"one-button-bandits?" Jean Scott, The Frugal
Gambler
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