Story: DEUCES NOT SO WILD

After outlasting all 38 other players in a local Texas Hold’em tournament, my friend Mike and I were pitted heads-up, mano a mano. Because we’ve been friends and poker fanatics for a long time, Mike and I know each other’s playing style backward and forward. In our one-on-one battle, we’d basically been stealing each other’s blinds for about 15 minutes or so when the unthinkable happened: a bad beat from the very depths of hell.

Our stacks were about even at the time, and I was dealt pocket twos; Mike held A-4, off suit. Naturally, Mike raised pre-flop, and I called. The flop came: 2S-2C-AD. “Thank you, God!” I thought to myself. The tournament, it appeared, was as good as mine. Sneakily, I checked. Mike, assuming he had the best hand with his aces-over-deuces two pair, went all-in. I looked him straight in the eye and said, “Mike, you’re an idiot.” Then I showed him my quad twos. He slumped down in his seat in a daze.

I asked him, half jokingly, “We don’t really need to see the rest of the cards, do we?” (Okay, I admit it. I was feeling invincible and just couldn’t help rubbing it in his face.) Mike quickly chimed back, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” Laughing, I said, “Okay, Mike. If you beat my four deuces, I’ll pay you the equivalent of everyone’s buy-in for the tournament.” He knew I was mocking him, but he nonetheless agreed.

Now, it should be noted that an individual buy-in for the tournament was $25. Multiply that by the 40 players entered, and my thoughtless bravado amounted to me possibly having to cough up a cool $1,000. When the turn produced the ace of hearts, Mike immediately perked up in his seat. I was barely paying attention, but when I finally realized that the card was an ace, I started mumbling, “No way. No way. There’s no f-ing way.”

Way. The river: Ace of clubs! I couldn’t even breathe. Mike started running around the house, screaming like a maniac. It took him nearly 10 minutes to finally calm down. I was cursing up a storm, naturally. Mike came back to the table, looked me in the eye, and declared, “Danny, you’re an idiot. Now where’s my thousand bucks?”

Well, it took me three weeks to pay off the debt. I basically forked over my next three paychecks. To this day, Mike continually reminds me of that bad beat. Every time he taunts me, I tell him that he’s the luckiest person alive, and that he must have sold his soul to the devil to get both the turn and the river to beat me.

As for me, I’ll never look at four deuces quite the same way again.