And the Medium Beat Goes On

Hi. Come on in. I've made a bunch of fried egg sandwiches (with real eggs). Some are firm and some are runny. Put on your bib and dig in. You can run off the cholesterol later.

I'm quite sure you must have noticed, as have I, that the stories of horror told by some players involve beats that most of us consider everyday happenings. They speak of marginal hands that figure to get beaten a fair share of the time.

I have discovered that there are seven-card stud players among us who consider getting jacks up cracked to be a catastrophe second only to having their cable TV go out for the entire football weekend. Could it be that they always win with those mediocre hands? Are those the worst beats they take? Is it possible that these people are a "luckier breed" than you and I – to the point that their loss threshold is somewhere around two medium-sized pair? Are they of such high consciousness that it is unthinkable for them to have a set cracked?

You'll recall (or perhaps you won't) that several months ago I established a clearinghouse for bad-beat stories. It was done surreptitiously in conjunction with my toll-free 800 Bad-Beat Hot Line. Its purpose is not to encourage bad-beat stories – heaven forbid! This bad-beat clearinghouse exists to collect, codify, categorize, and analyze the plethora of bad-beat stories existing wherever the glorious game of poker is played. And that's what I've been doing. (But you'd call it "eavesdropping.")

(According to my best sources, the very first bad-beat story was Cain describing to his brother Abel how their sister drew out on him with a 23-to-1 shot to take a monster-size pot.)

The information being gleaned from our bad-beat clearinghouse will be of inestimable value. It could possibly be helpful in answering some of mankind's most perplexing questions. For example,

"Why are some people's bad-beat stories always so much milder than yours?"

While eavesdropping – oops, I mean doing research – at the Bad-Beat Hot Line office, I met a person who seemed to be in total agony as he described, in excruciating detail, his bad beat. The way he was going on, in such pain, my mind raced ahead to conclude that he must have gotten four of a kind or even a straight flush cracked. It turned out that he was in all of this agony over three eights. Three eights! Who among us would consider getting three eights cracked a bad beat of monumental proportions? Yet, here he was, bitterly going on and on. At that point I began recalling that his last three bad-beat stories were of similar marginal hands being done dirty.

I questioned him on this point. Sure enough, he almost never lost with trips. And a straight, or a flush, or anything better was an absolutely solid stone-cold win. There was no way for him to lose with hands of that magnitude. I asked him if he had ever lost with a pat hand of aces full in draw poker, as I had one bleak night down in Laughlin years ago. He just stared at me as if I was fabricating some preposterous story of woe in an attempt to top his tale of horror.

I am beginning to think there are those players among us whom the poker angels protect.

To me, a bad beat begins somewhere around the level of a middle-sized full house being cracked, and goes up from there. Anything less is just another loss.

One of these days I'll tell you a couple of "good win" stories. I have lots of those. Meanwhile, have yourself a salubrious life. May all go well with you to the point that when you count your blessings, you'll need a computer.

I think you're the person for whom bibs were invented, thank goodness. Now I grow weary and require rest. Put one of those sandwiches in your pocket for your breakfast and kill the light on your way out.

Roy West, author of the bestseller 7 Card Stud, the Complete Course in Winning (available from Card Player), continues to give his successful poker lessons in Las Vegas to both tourists and locals. Ladies are welcome. Call 1-800-548-6177 Ext. 03.