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 K-3-3. Naturally I go "all in." Across from me a player
was holding 6-5 suited, then matches one of the threes. 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
