Worst Beat Ever

I have good relationships with the two television directors I mainly work with, Martin Turner and Katie Hearn. By the way, Katie is my tip for one of the top women players in Europe in 2010. She hit the crossbar twice in 2009, going really deep in the World Series of Poker main event and then she took 17th in a side event of the World Series of Poker Europe.

When I’ve got the players at the table while we are filming, if we have a technical breakdown or a fault then Katie or Martin asks me to address the table and keep all the players there. Sometimes I have to keep them at the table for ten or twenty minutes, but my all-time record for keeping the table talking is an hour and 35 minutes when we had a delay in getting the cash for the start of the PartyPoker Sports Stars Challenge. I spoke about my grandma, the Guinness Book of Records, football legend Lou Macari, and my sheepskin coat. Just as the door opened with the money coming in, I gave six players the punch line and after one hour and thirty-five minutes, Tony Cascarino replied that he’d heard it before.

I’ve usually got a story or a quiz question at the ready but on one particular instance we had six Americans at the table during the Poker Million. I’m not going to mention the player’s name but I asked them what was their worst beat ever, and the reply that came back was about to stun me forever. I had absolutely no idea how bad a beat could be.

It seems that a well known American poker star once dreamt that he was going to win $1 million. He had reached the last 18 of a World Series event when they broke for the end of the day’s play. He returned in good shape with good chips and he sat down at the table. After a few levels he pushed all in with pocket jacks only to get called by pocket eights for a pot that was quite sizable relating to the chips left in play. The flop has come down J-7-6. What a fantastic flop for a pair of jacks. But the turn came a 10 and the river came a 9, giving the pocket eights a straight.

The player was devastated. When he went to the desk he was told that he had finished in 14th position, collecting $30,000. He then had to walk the longest corridor in the history of poker tournaments, from the Rio card room to the casino.

When the American player got to the edge of the casino he walked straight into the high-rollers section of the Rio, which has roulette wheels and blackjack tables. He placed the $30,000 in chips on number 14, the position he had finished in the tournament. He knew his dream could not be wrong. The $30,000 would return him $1,050,000.

The verification of the bet had to come from the pit boss, and his reply was, “It’s only that poker player. Let his bet stand.” The ball spun in the wooden wheel dropping in 14. Wow!

And then it bounced out and dropped in 13. The poker player was distraught. He turned and walked away with his head held down and spent the next 24 hours inside his darkened hotel room with the shades pulled down. It was then that he received a phone call from the management of the poker tournament that he had been playing in the day before. “Our deepest apologies,” said the manager of the tournament. “There’s been a terrible mistake. It turns out that you actually finished in 13th position in the tournament. We paid you the wrong amount of money. You have another $2,600 to collect!”

I feel 2010 will be a fantastic year for me. Believe it or not, my first ever phone number when I was a child was Ford Houses 2010. So for years I have been picking up the telephone saying, “Two thousand and ten!” And I never thought about it until New Year’s Day when I had to write it down for the first time. This means for sure that my destiny is in 2010 and I feel that this will be the year for me at the WSOP in 2010. Let’s get busy living.

Mad Marty Wilson is a professional gambler and poker consultant for Matchroom Sport.