Poker

Poker, like life, is full of surprises. Most of them are rather unpleasant, but one that bucked the trend happened in a micro stakes hold'em game last week. A bunch of low stakes hopefuls were playing at a 50 cent - $1 limit table on the Party Poker virtual card room - the sort of game in which $20 is a big win.

They were pottering along in their mini game when the following hand turned up. A player whose screen name was Shoulderguy picked up two red kings in the hole, Judith75 found two black nines and Hiyall was dealt Ac-Qc. All three hit part of the flop. This came Kc-9h- 10c which gave Shoulderguy a set of kings, Judith75 a set of nines and Hiyall a massive draw to top straight, a nut flush and also a royal flush.

In even a medium-size game a freak deal of this nature would result in a week's wages going into the pot in double quick time, but because of the limits the maximum they each managed to get into the middle was a whole $2, about 1.

The turn card, the fourth common card was the jack of clubs which gave Hiyall his unbeatable royal flush. This slowed down the holders of the sets of kings and nines and on this round of betting they bet a mere $1 each, a paltry 50p. The river card, the fifth and final common card was the diamond nine which gave Judith75 four of a kind. It also gave Shoulderguy a king's full house, so a small betting war broke out. Hiyall bet $1, Shoulderguy raised to $2, Judith75 made it $3 and when Hiyall re-raised to $4 the bet was "capped" - poker speak for no more raising allowed. The other two called and saw that Hiyall's royal was the winner with the pot standing at $24. But then the celebrations began. They were immediately alerted to the fact that they had won the site's bad beat jackpot. Bad beat jackpots in poker are built up from a dollar contribution from each hand dealt and are divided between those involved when two freak hands lock horns. The terms of Party Poker's were for four eights or higher to be beat by a straight flush.

The holder of the losing hand gets around a third of the money, the high hand a sixth and the other players share the rest. It just so happened that it had been building up over the past couple of months and had reached a world record sum for a BBJ (bad beat jackpot) of over $1m.

So Hiyall won more than $177,000 to go with his $24 pot, Judith75 found an unexpected $354,000 in her account and the onlookers at the table picked up over $22,000 each.

Nice surprise.

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