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Ignorance is bliss, they say, and that’s especially true in poker where the worst beats hurt so much harder because we know exactly how mathematically unlikely they are. Ever had an opponent hit runner-runner four-of-a-kind to beat your flopped set? That’s a 989-1 shot, right there. Putting a number to the thing makes the painful absurdity of the situation all the more real.
But the worst bad beat stories transcend the math. They are due more to a bizarre set of circumstances than they are subject to numbers: A fifth deuce comes on the river, rendering the deck illegal; an angry old woman folds four aces, robbing her obnoxious opponent of the bad beat jackpot that his four fours would have won. These things really happen, but the stories are so extraordinary that it’s sometime hard to separate fact from legend. But this month’s hand is as real as it gets: It’s the players who made it legend.
I learned about this particular hand by reading Steve Rosenbloom’s wonderful The Best Hand I Ever Played: 52 Winning Poker Lessons From the World’s Greatest Players. The book, written in 2 to 3-page essays, recounts the best-ever hands as told by 52 of the best-known players in the world. Defining “best” was left to the teller. For T.J. Cloutier, it wasn’t the hand that he played the best nor the hand that won him the most money, but it was the most unlikely to occur. It makes for a wonderful story.
Cloutier is one of the legendary Rounders. After a remarkable college football career, he spent some time playing in Canada until his back and knees couldn’t take any more punishment. A series of odd jobs led him to the oil-rigging fields in Texas, and poker was always nearby. Now, forty years later, it’s said he’s won more tournaments than anybody. He’s won millions at the World Series, where he collected five bracelets and cashed ten times more. A year ago, he became one of the few to be elected to the Poker Hall of Fame while still alive to see it.
On the night in question, T.J.’s victim was Al Krux. A diamond merchant-turned-poker player, Krux’s fame hasn’t matched Cloutier’s, but his accomplishments within the game come close. Although primarily a cash game player, when Krux has wandered to the tournament tables he’s made the most of it. Three times Krux has made his way to the final table of the Main Event of the World Series of Poker. He’s also won one of those gold bracelet thingies that players are so fond of.
Rosenbloom recounts T.J.’s telling of the story:
It was against Al Krux, a cash game at the Bicycle Club about ten years ago. No-Limit Hold’em. He hadn’t won a pot all day. He had like $445 or something and he moved all in. The guy to his left was getting a massage. He lifted his head up and looked at [his hand]; he decided not to call and threw it away. The massage girl saw the hand, too.
“It got around to me on the button. I had two tens and I said, ‘Hell, I’ll call him,’ because this was the last of his money and he might not have too much. So I call. Now, the dealer didn’t see that I made the call and she dropped the deck on the muck. That meant she had to reshuffle all the cards.
When Krux turned over his pocket kings, Cloutier realized only too late that his appraisal of the situation had been a little out of whack. With the hands shown, the man in the massage informed the table he’d thrown away two tens, a claim the masseuse verified. Barring the miracle straight or flush, a tall order for a pocket pair, T.J. would have been dead in the water if not for the dealer’s miscue.
Lightning struck on the flop. A ten came off the top, only to be joined by a four and a king. Both players had made their threes-of-a kind; Cloutier’s thanks to the dealer’s mistake. With hopes for a straight or flush now down the drain, T.J. was left with just one out; the already-folded ten. The poker gods didn’t waste any time; it came on the turn.
While T.J. tells the story with casual grace and a smile, Krux tells it now with stunned awe. See, a poker player like Krux has seen a million hands and heard all of the stories in the world. This one, though, was so extraordinary that even he, as victim, had to appreciate the tale in hindsight. “I’ll tell you, you’ll never see another hand like it,” he told me, eyes wide, his face filled with child-like wonderment. He’s probably right.
Poker stays so fresh to us because every hand is different. We’ve all heard more bad beat stories than we could ever want to. Sometimes, though, the artistry of the thing is too great not to appreciate. Cloutier called the hand “the worst beat in the history of poker.” It may be the best beat, too.
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