A Tale of Bad Beats

by Quinn

Kids, let me tell you a story. Back in the olden days, around aught five, the federal government hadn't yet enacted prohibition and the cards flew freely over a series of tubes we called the interweb. No one was any good at poker yet, and Party Poker was a glorious shining fishbowl atop a mountain.

I played the bad beat jackpot tables there religiously. I was convinced that the play at the BBJ tables was bad enough that I could compensate for the extra 50c of rake. I saw a 2+2 post once that said the extra rake accounted for about a .3BB/100 loss for the poster, and while I never did the math, that jives with my own experience. I was totally convinced at the time that this was a small price to pay for significantly worse play, but at this great remove, I'm not sure if the parlay of the worse play plus the EV of the jackpot was really overcoming the drop

However, I digress.

Part of the problem with playing those BBJ tables was that when the jackpot got to any decent level, say over 80k, I felt tied to the tables. I'd grind away for hours on end, slave to the massive EV I had to be getting. Of course, I needed to be shown naked pictures of the Golden Girls, a la Clockwork Orange, to stay awake, but it's a small price to pay, right? Online poker is worth this, right?

The other thing about playing at those BBJ tables is it's pretty detrimental to your health. And I mean more detrimental then your standard Cheetos- and cigarette-fueled online session. Every time any possible jackpot combination would come up, no matter how unlikely, your heart races as you try to talk yourself into ways that someone could actually have it. For instance, “Well I could see how he could slowplay pocket kings on every street. It's not that bad.”

However, the thinest veneer of logic still applied, so when it was capped preflop, four ways, I didn't expect to see the best hands. But say, the top 50% of hands seemed reasonable. When the flop came ace of spades, four of spades, ace of hearts, and the hand was capped again, I suppose that should have struck me as strange, but I had folded and was busy with my sleep-addled visions.

The turn came a blank, and then the river dropped a five of spades. Before I had managed to puzzle it out, the incredible 2,3 of spades had made a straight flush, and beaten four aces.

So to recap, the administrator of the bad beat who just won $40k, had called a preflop cap with 23s. This was what the online betting world was like. I cry big salty tears when I think about it.

Party poker put about 5 grand in my account 20 seconds later. I'm not sure which was harder to wrap my head around, that I had just won that much money for sitting and watching a deeply ridiculous hand, or that it took Party less than half a minute to pay out over $150,000.

I stepped outside and smoked a cigarette. Sadly, there was no reaching down pants excitement, but I thought about the fact that I would probably never see four of a kind or better lose, two hole card stipulation and all, again.

Immediately afterwards I realized that this was significantly less important than having just made five friggin grand. I went over to Party's online casino and donked off about $200 of it before reeling in the inner monkey and making a cashout.