Jason Stringer

I know reading about poker hands is boring as bat shit, so I will keep this as brief and interesting as I can for those who don’t play the game (and hey, if you can’t vent on your own blog, what’s the point of having one? I need to be able to look back on this memory in years to come so this is more like a journal entry).

I’m a member of the Australian Poker League (APL) along with my brother and my father. We play for free at the local bar every other Monday, it’s great fun and you get to meet some interesting people. It’s no different from socially playing volleyball or indoor cricket, for instance… only we play poker. Over 100 people usually sit each week so it’s a mean effort to survive and play at the final table. I’ve been there six times and come second twice, but never won it (yet!).

Anyway, I didn’t do too well this evening and I was eliminated in what is discribed in poker circles as a ‘bad beat’. It’s when odds say you really should have won the hand, but the poker Gods strike you down with the only card in the deck that can beat you. Only this was worse… this was BRUTAL.

Bottom line, I had four 9′s … that’s FOUR OF A KIND! Every single 9 in the deck was in play. Two in my hand and two on the board. This hand is just two below a Royal Flush and almost as rare. It’s huge! It’s only the third time I’ve seen four-of-a-kind in my poker experience, and that is a LOT of hands. The odds of losing the hand while holding these cards in Texas Hold ‘Em poker is seriously under 2%. In football terms, it’d be like leading by 47 points in the third term, only to lose by 24 at the end of the game… it’s almost unheard of! (At least ONE side is representing South Australia this year, Anita…)

Anyway, with my incredibly safe QUAD 9′s I was able to reel in another player who clearly had a flush (you can just tell these things… it’s about reading the players), only my reading was a little blinded by the fact I was holding a really-cannot-lose-ever hand. We put all our chips in the middle. I couldn’t get mine in fast enough! Their little flush was about to be SQUASHED to shit! Only… they were holding a STRAIGHT FLUSH!! 5-6-7-8-9-diamonds, all in a pretty row. This hand and a Royal Flush are the only two hands that can beat four-of-a-kind, and it is extremely rare to see. So rare, in fact, that they announced the hand over the PA, took a photograph of us for the national APL website and everyone gave me a round of applause for such a brutal beat.

That was nice of them…

At least I was eliminated with a MONSTER hand. Anyone would have gone all the way with quads. Anyone. Myself included.

So that’s my story/sook over with. Thanks for reading and allowing me to vent. I’m off to play some more online now and try to recover!