The Good Bad Beat

One thing a poker player looks forward to when he enters a new casino is the bad beat.

How much is it? What hands do you need to qualify for it? When can I get my seat at a table?

Over my many years of playing poker, I have hit several bad beat jackpots. I won $19,000 when my four jacks were beat by four queens at The Orleans Casino and Resort in Las Vegas. I picked up another $11,000 in another bad beat jackpot and won $6,000 in a third one.

I don't know who originally came up with the concept for a bad beat jackpot, but it's a gem.

There are many perks offered in a poker room to keep people playing. High hands...football Sundays (or Thursdays, Saturdays or Mondays)...pay-offs for quads or royal flushes...splash pots...and even lucky seat drawings.

The poker room management determines the hands that qualify for bad beats. For many years the standard rule was that aces over 10s or jacks had to be beaten by a better hand. Then somebody came up with the idea to make it even tougher to hit and raised the beaten hand to quad deuces or higher.

Naturally, that made it more difficult to beat such a hand. The jackpot would grow so high, in some cases to a couple hundred thousand dollars, that poker players would drive for hundreds of miles just to get a chance at cracking the jackpot.

Players love to play for bad beats and dealers get a kick out of dealing them. The players are generous with their tips, as well as the dealers, go home happy.

Last night the table where I was playing $8-16 Omaha High-Low hit the bad beat jackpot. The player sitting next to me to my right was dealt four queens, while a player three seats away to my left received four 10s. All the other players at the table including yours truly were paid $700. And, yes, everybody went home happy.

Some poker players resent bad beat jackpots. They don't like the idea of taking a dollar out of every pot to pay for them. All I can say to such an attitude is to borrow a phrase from one of my favorite characters in literature Scrooge: 'Bah, humbug!'

Christmas is just around the corner. Wouldn't you love to win your share of a bad beat jackpot? Just think of all the people you could make happy with Christmas gifts? You could be like a regenerated Scrooge running through the city on his spindly old legs, buying turkeys and gifts for loved ones as well as strangers.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, wrong with a bad beat. The world should have more of them. Let the action begin.

Author: Geno Lawrenzi Jr.

(Geno Lawrenzi Jr. is an international journalist, magazine author and ghostwriter and poker player who lives in Phoenx, AZ. He has published 2,000 articles in 50 magazines and 125 newspapers. If you want to share a gambling story or book idea with him, send an email to glawrenzi@gmail.com ).