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Bad beat
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about the poker term. For the poker player, see Neil "Bad Beat" Channing.
In poker, "bad beat" is a subjective term for a hand in which a player who had what appeared to be strong cards nevertheless loses. There is no consensus among poker players as to what exactly constitutes a bad beat, and often players will disagree about whether a particular hand was a bad beat.
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Any hand that looked like a favorite to win can end up losing as more cards are dealt, but bad beats usually involve one of two scenarios:
- The player who wins via a bad beat is rewarded for mathematically unsound play. Calling a bet despite having neither the best hand nor the right pot odds to call, then winning anyway, is characteristic of this type of bad beat. It can also involve the inferior hand catching runners when it required two cards in a row to come from behind to win the pot. For example, catching cards on both the turn and the river in Texas hold 'em that complete a straight or a flush.
- A very strong hand loses to an even stronger one. This type of beat occurs with some frequency in movies. In the films The Cincinnati Kid and Casino Royale, the Kid and Le Chiffre, respectively, lose with full houses to straight flushes.
A bad beat is often a profound psychological blow, and can easily lead to a player going on tilt. Professional player Phil Hellmuth, among others, is notorious for his pronounced reactions to bad beats. However, suffering a bad beat means that the losing player was "getting the money in good" and in most instances will win the pot. Thus, the more stoic poker players accept bad beats as an unpleasant but necessary drawback to a tactic that works the vast majority of the time. Scotty Nguyen is famous for saying, "That's poker baby." in response to a bad beat.
In online poker rooms, bad beats often lead to accusations that the random number generator is "rigged", even though such beats also occur in offline games. Many online poker rooms post statistical data which purports to confirm the randomness of the hands generated.[1] Bad beats may seem more common in online poker because more hands per hour can be dealt than at live games, and players often play more than one table at a time. The more hands that are dealt, the more chances for any given situation, including a bad beat, to occur.
A bad beat jackpot is a prize that is paid when a sufficiently strong hand is shown down and loses to an even stronger hand held by another player.[2] Not all poker games offer bad beat jackpots, and those that do have specific requirements for how strong a losing hand must be to qualify for the jackpot. For example, the losing hand may be required to be four-of-a-kind or better. There may be additional requirements as well. For example, in Texas hold 'em there is usually a requirement that both hole cards play in both the losing and winning hands.
Bad beat jackpots are usually progressive, often with a small rake being taken out of each pot to fund the jackpot (in addition to the regular rake). When a jackpot is won, it is usually split among all players sitting at the table at the time of the bad beat with the losing hand getting the largest share.
Because these jackpots are marketing tools to attract customers to the casino, specific rules, collections, payout percentages, and amounts vary greatly from one casino or cardroom to the next, and are often changed.