Story: THE BEAT GOES ON (AND ON)

I am the king of bad beats. I get them at casinos, online, and, unfortunately, playing with friends. I get the usual ones most of the time — A-K vs. A-Q, pocket queens vs. pocket sevens, K-Q vs. Q-10 — but my propensity for suffering bad beats has developed into a running joke of sorts among my buddies.

Although we generally don’t play for big money, my friends and I get together several times a month for a $50 buy-in with one $25 re-buy. At a recent game, with the blinds at $1-$2, I landed pocket queens in first position. I threw in an $8 bet. Everybody folded, except for one caller. The flop came Q-A-K, giving me a set. I bet $15. Surprisingly, the caller re-raised all-in. I was almost 100-percent sure that he’d flopped a pair of aces, or possibly two pair, so I quickly called. He turned over A-9. I revealed my trip queens and tried to suppress a laugh.

The turn was another ace and some knucklehead at the table screamed, “He has trip aces now!” I smiled and calmly stated, “Well, it doesn’t really matter because I just hit a full house.” As I prepared to collect my winnings, the river produced a king, giving my opponent an aces-over-kings full house to bust my queens-over-aces full house. Yup, I was done in by runner-runner, which caused everyone at the table to start laughing (except me, course!).

Despite my disappointment, I wasn’t quite ready to call it a night, so I decided to opt for the $25 re-buy. At that point, my strategy was to wait on a decent hand to play in order to win back some of my money.

After being dealt pocket eights, I raised $10 and got one caller (coincidentally, the same friend who’d lucked out earlier to beat me). The flop came 7S-8C-9C. My friend checked, so I decided to play this hand a little differently and checked, too. The turn was the eight of hearts, giving me quad eights. “Perfect!” I thought to myself. My friend bet and I was seriously hoping that he had pocket sevens or nines, or maybe even a full boat.

I eagerly pushed all-in. He immediately called, flipped over his 10C-JC, and gushed, “I flopped a straight and slow played you!” I showed him my cards and said, “Your straight isn’t good enough because I’ve got quads!”

With just the river to come, I was pretty much assured of getting my money back. . . . That is, until the river turned out to be the queen of clubs, bestowing my friend with a straight flush. Everyone was stunned.

Furious, I stormed out of the house. On the drive home I realized that if this second beat had only occurred in a casino, rather than at a friend’s home, I could have collected a $25,000 bad beat jackpot! Instead, though, I have just another bad beat story to tell.