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Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Bad Beat In Vegas


It seems like some of my favorite bloggers have been writing about bad beats this week. I also joined the whine-fest by including a couple hands I played the other night on Full Tilt.

Now I want to tell you of my all-time worst beat.

It was a warm summer night in Las Vegas several years ago. I was sitting at a $2-4 limit hold-em game at the Plaza, playing some cards, visiting and enjoying a few adult beverages. Sitting in early position, I looked down at pocket threes and called. As is the norm in a low-limit game, there were several limpers before the button raised. Everyone called and we saw a flop of 7c,3d,6c. I bet my set and got a couple of calls, including the pre-flop button raiser.

The turn was the 8h. Once again, I bet my set and it was folded to the button, who raised. I put him on either an over pair or a set of eights and called.

The river was the case three, giving me quads. I bet $4 and the villain raised to $8. I now had him solidly on pocket eights and betting his full house, which was no good. I was absolutely giddy and re-raised to $12.

The dealer then announced that because we were heads-up, there was no cap on betting.

SAH-WEET!

Villain raised again and we went back and forth for quite some time until we had around $200 in the pot. When he finally just called, I knew I had him and tabled my quad threes.

He looked at my hand, then slow-rolled the 4c,5c. Did I forget to mention that the case 3 was a club, giving him a straight flush?

Oh crap! You could hear the whole table go "Oooooohhh."

There could have been a dinosaur walk in the Plaza and take a dump on my shoes and I wouldn't have been more shocked than I was to lose that hand.

In poker lingo, pocket twos are known as "ducks." At the local games I play, in my honor, "ducks" are pocket threes.

There was a happy ending though. I did win a $25 high hand jackpot!

8 comments:

  1. OMFG! That happening in the Bizarro World of Full Tilt is one thing, but LIVE?
    There's no getting away from quads.

    Ha - I'll be calling threes ducks at my next home game too. Great post.

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  2. VJ-

    Yep, I was surprised to say the least.

    I never figured out why he finally just called. I still had money behind and it was certainly going in the middle. Maybe he didn't realize he had the nuts.

    Thanks for the comment!

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  3. Duck, that's some hard cheese right there. I think if I lost with quads I might just tear the joint up. I DEFINITELY would give the villain an earful for slowrolling me.

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  4. G-man-

    Yeah, it was a rough one. And I probably should have said something about the slow roll, but I was speechless at the time.

    Oh well, it's a great story and only cost me a couple Benjamins!

    Thanks for dropping in!

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  5. Oooh bad beat tales. Wheee! Ok. Back in the day. When I was super awesome at the game. I had QQ. I flopped quads on a QQK flop. My opponent bet the flop for me. The turn is a rag. I bet the turn. My opponent calls. The river is a king. I say to myself "I absolutely know that he has KK.". I however had way too much committed to the pot so I paid off the river with my small amount left and took one of my only quad over quad beats ever.

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  6. Geez Waffles, that sucks!

    Too bad you weren't playing on Absolute Poker at the time. Their bad-beat jackpot would have paid five figures.

    Thanks for the story!

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  7. Wow -- I am fortunate to have never taken that bad of a bad beat.

    One time in Las Vegas two guys kept re-raising each other (same kind of situation like you had) until one guy finally said "I am just calling in the hope that you learn a lesson here." He called and turned over the stone cold nuts! I always wondered if people thought he should or shouldn't have done that. Some thought the best way to teach the lesson was to take all the money.

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  8. lightning-

    I'm not a big fan of speeches at the table. Especially if someone is just being a jerk like the one you described.

    If they give you a speech while betting, run for the hills, they usually have a monster hand!

    Thanks for dropping by.

    ReplyDelete