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According to Ace Hunter, commander of Megaforce: “Life’s like a
wheel: it all comes around.” And the poker table is the ideal venue
for Commander Hunter’s philosophy to play out, oftentimes with dire
consequences.
While attending college at Arizona State University, I would often play
poker at Casino Arizona, a good-sized card room with a wide variety
of games. For those of you who haven’t mixed it up in one of
the Grand Canyon State’s casinos, they are all Native
American-owned, and the majority offer impressive perks
and giveaways. But since poker is our primary concern, the
only “perk” worth mentioning are the bad beat jackpots.
If you’ve never played in a poker room with a bad beat jackpot, the rules
are simple: using both hole cards (for Hold’em), if your high hand (normally
aces full of tens or better) is cracked by a higher hand (often quads or
better), congratulations, you just netted yourself a hefty bonus. At most
card clubs, the loser of the hand receives 50% of the jackpot, the winner
gets 25%, and the other players seated at that table divide up the
remaining 25%. What’s more, most of AZ’s bad beat jackpots are progressive
– increasing daily until they are hit. If memory serves me correctly,
Fort McDowell Casino in Fountain Hills holds the record for the
world’s largest bad beat jackpot ever paid, somewhere in the neighborhood
of $160,000.
While biding my time for a more lucrative $20/$40
Limit Hold’em game, I snagged an open seat in a
$6/$12 game. Shortly after unracking my chips, I realized
there was a significant amount of tension at the
table, all of it between two players – the #3 seat, a
young guy, mid-30s, stocky, with a crew cut, and the #9
seat, an older woman, possibly way north of the century
mark; had someone handed her a broom, I would’ve
grabbed Dorothy and Toto and whisked them to safety.
Seated in the center of the table, the first few hands I played
felt like a ping-pong match as Crew Cut continuously spouted
muttered-but-audible off-color remarks, all directed at the
Wicked Witch of the West, who had absolutely no qualms
about issuing verbal retaliations. Being impartial, I nevertheless
gave props to the elder combatant; her replies
were much more creative: “The height of your hair is a
direct reflection of your IQ,” and other statements along
those lines.
Eventually, curiosity got the better of me and I turned
to my neighbor for enlightenment. Apparently, the bad
blood began the way it usually begins at a poker table: he
had a high pocket pair (in this case, queens) and she
stayed in with a small pair (fours), and eventually snapped
him off when she paired her kicker (an unsuited 7) on
the river.
OK, shit happens, let’s move on. However, Crew Cut
had no intention of letting the events of Bad Beats Past
fade quietly into the night. Oh, no.
A few hands later, nearly the entire table stuck
around to see the pre-raised flop (Casino Arizona is well
known for ultra-live action, regardless of the game –
must be the desert sun!) of K-K-A. After a bet and a call,
only two were left in the hunt – yup, you guessed it: Crew
Cut and the Witch (sounds like the title of the next Harry Potter novel, doesn’t it?).
Something irrelevant, an 8, I think,
hit the turn and all hell broke loose.
Because they were heads-up, there
was no cap on raises, and the two kept
coming over the top of one another as
if they were playing leapfrog to the
death.
The rest of us were amped by the furious
action and we were all reasonably confident
that a boatload of “found money” was about
to land in each of our laps. Expecting to dole
out some serious cash – the jackpot was
around $60,000 at the time – two floormen
raced over to watch the hand play out.
Crew Cut got it all in first and the pot was
now somewhere in the vicinity of $500, pretty
decent for a $6/$12 game. With no betting
action left, and only the river to come, Crew
Cut proudly flipped over his hand, pocket
rockets, giving him aces full of kings, the
minimum qualifier for Casino Arizona’s bad
beat jackpot.
“Go ahead and beat it,” Crew Cut said
antagonizingly. “Gimme a bad beat.”
A rag on the river changed nothing and all
eyes turned to the old hag, now nodding her
head in the affirmative. “Okey-doke,” she
said, and turned over her pocket kings, giving
her quads, the winning hand, and the
small end of the bad beat jackpot.
Crew Cut threw up his hands in victory.
“Boom!” he screamed, mentally spending his
lion’s share of the jackpot, right around $30,000.
But the drama wasn’t finished yet. Before anyone
could convince her otherwise, Witchy-Poo scooped
up her pocket kings and held them out to her
younger, wise-cracking nemesis.
“Here’s your bad beat,” she said with unflinching
satisfaction and casually tossed her hand into
the muck.
We were all dumbfounded – the players,
the dealer, the floormen, not to mention all
the lookie-loos who always run to a table
when a jackpot has been declared. A chorus
of “Holy shits” (it’s the cleanest thing I
can write) spread through the crowd.
As for Crew Cut, he turned more colors
than a chameleon on a Twister board and collapsed
heavily into his chair, mouth agape, his hands locked
onto his near hairless scalp.
“Why would you do that?” he queried, mouth
aquiver. “You were gonna get fifteen grand.”
“I don’t need the money,” she said with complete
disdain, while racking up the remainder of her
chips. “But knowing you did…” She stopped racking,
stared at him and smiled wide, a grin so shit-eating,
it would give a fly the chills.
To say we were all pretty pissed was a major
understatement, as we were just intentionally hosed
out of our players’ shares, a smidge over $2K each.
But I gotta hand it to the old gal – she definitely got
the last laugh, and taught that young pecker-head a
valuable lesson he’ll never forget.
Ol’ Ace wasn’t kidding… Sooner or later, it all
comes around.
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