What I am about to tell you, will be by far, the worst bad beat you can imagine. I’ve been playing poker for 25+ years and have taken some disgusting bad beats, this one didn’t happen to me, it happened to one of my closest, life long friends. His name is Eddie, Fast Eddie in his earlier days in  Las Vegas or Buzzard, to his more recent friends in south Florida.

Eddie is an incredible gin and poker player and he happens to be one heck of a story teller too, every single time he tells me this very true story, I laugh and cry at the same time. You will understand why in a minute!

The story takes place in the late 1970s in Las Vegas, Eddie was playing $50-$100 seven card stud, high-low split. The betting is really not important up until this point. On 5th street (the first 5 cards) Eddie has a steel wheel, A-2-3-4-5 of diamonds. Eddie makes a bet of $100, by the time it got back to him, the bet was $500. In those days,  4 raises were allowed. Eddie is in heaven as it appears that everyone has a hand, a few players have lows, others have a high hand, and here Eddie as the nuts, he is guaranteed part of this pot and much more likely, the whole pot.

On 6th street, the betting goes exactly the same way, Eddie bets $100 and it’s $500 by the time it gets back to him.

On 7th street (the river) the dealer deals the last card face down. Eddie doesn’t even look at the card, because he doesn’t care what the last card is, he has a monster. The betting goes the same way, $100, $200, $300, $400, $500!!

Eddie screams at the top of his lungs, “straight flush wheel”!!!! And as he does this, he turns up his hole cards to show his hand, and to his unbelievable horror, he has 4 hole cards! When the dealer dealt that last down card, there was obviously 2 cards stuck together. Eddie never looked at this last card because he didn’t care what it was, if he had looked, he swears he would of made one of those cards disappear from the planet! If he would of seen the card coming at him, with 2 stuck together, he said he would of stopped the dealer in action and the top card would of come to Eddie, but the dealer dealt it so perfectly and smoothly, it went right into Eddie’s hand.

The dealer then looked at Eddie and said “Eddie, your hand is dead, you have too many cards.” Eddie said “dead?? You’re dead, *##@$^”.  Eddie then leaped on top of the table with the pot under him, screaming like a lunatic. The pot was thousands of dollars and he wasn’t going to give up that easy.

The card room manager grabbed Eddie, put his arm around Eddie’s neck, saying “Eddie, you have to stop, you have to stop.” Eddie was saying “stop!? I have a straight flush wheel!” Several security guards were now standing around the table.  It took several minutes to get him off the table. He had to let it soak in that he want from a hand that you only dream of, to not getting any part of the pot at all.

He finally calmed down enough to light up a cigarette and sit back in the chair. He took some deep breaths, the security guards finally left the room then all of a sudden the dealer said “Eddie, do you want a hand?” and Eddie lost it once again, he said “Do I want a hand!?”.

Next time you think you got a bad beat, think about this story and I’m pretty sure you will agree, you didn’t.