I headed to the Gilpin Casino for their $80 buy-in tourney. There would be 50 players and $1,450 for first. We got down to two tables and I am in second chip position on the big blind with 40,000 chips. The chip leader, in first position, calls. I check. The flop is T-8-6 rainbow. I bet 3,000 with top two pair and was called only by the chip leader, who had about 60,000 in chips. The turn was another ten, which gave me the nuts. Noticing that he looked eager to bet, I checked. He bets 7,000, I raised to 14,000. He went all-in with me beating him in the pot. He was surprised to see I had his Q-T beaten. But I was more surprised when he took $1,450 out my pocket when a queen hit the river. That, my friends, is poker. But was it a bad beat?
For most hold 'em players, bad beat stories are of little interest. In fact, many players may cut you off in mid-sentence and refuse to listen. However, some of these same players think a loss when they are only a 3-to-2 favorite qualifies as a bad beat.
Some whine when they go all-in with a pair of aces before the flop and are beaten by another player's pair that becomes a set (4-to-1).
In fact, if we agree that our standard for a hold 'em bad beat is a 20-to-1 or larger favorite losing to another hand, there are no qualifying pre-flop bad beats. That's none, zero, nada, zip, and zilch. Your biggest pre-flop bad beat does not involve aces and is only a 19-to-1 shot. It's K-K against K-2, when the deuce is the same suit as one of your kings.
What about bad beats after the flop? First let's look at situations on the river. There are only two situations exceeding 20-to-1. The worst situation occurs when a player wins with only one out of forty-four unknown cards. Next is a two-outer which is a 22-to-1 situation. Other situations fall short of the 20-to-1 odds.
Thus my hand above at the Gilpin would not qualify as a bad beat under these terms. My opponent had to hit one of three queens to win, approximately a 15-to-1 shot, or one of two eights to tie.
How Bad Can It Be? To see truly long odds, we must look at hands on the flop. If two specific cards are needed for your opponent to win, which would occur when you flop quads and your opponent holds a higher pair that is not helped on the flop and must hit trips on the turn and quads on the river to win, that equates to (2/45 x 1/44=1/990. or about one in a thousand). This is the worst beat in hold 'em.
The second worst beat is a situation when you are beaten by either of two specific pairs of cards on the turn and river, e.g., your opponent may hit either runner-runner for higher quads or runner-runner for a straight flush to beat your flopped quads (4/45 x 1/44=1/495 or about one chance in 500). No other situations come close to these. Most of these situations, such as back-dooring a flush, straight, or full-house are less than 75-to-1. Emotionally these hands seem like bad beats, but mathematically they happen to every serious player and even to those once per week home-game players. So stop whining; then shuffle-up and deal.
Mike Eikenberry got his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Virginia, where he played varsity tennis and basketball. Founder of one of the leading national tennis camps, Mike is an avid amateur who has played both tournaments and live games for over 25 years. He can be reached at theeiks@comcast.net
