A Bad Beat

This past weekend I went to Mille Lacs Lake to ice fish with my in-laws. Collectively we caught around five perch. I didn't catch anything. Only a bite or two.

On Friday night a majority of the group headed to the local casino to play poker and make cash donations to the blackjack table and video machines. I decided to take a hot tub and then have a beer with two of my brother-in-laws.

While sipping on a cold one, my other brother-in-law called to say my cousin-in-law just won the bad beat. Bad beat means that a player had a great hand (typically a full house, Aces over Kings or more) and got beat by a player with a better hand. Very rare indeed.

Earlier that day my father-in-law told me the bad beat pot was around $55,000. Thinking that was far too much, I corrected him and said "you mean $5,500 right?" He then corrected me and restated $55,000.

So when told that my cousin-in-law won the bad beat, I knew it must have been for a sizable amount. It was. He got 50% of the $55,000 or around $27,500. After taxes he'll end up with around $20,000 or so.

While the fishing wasn't great and I lost my conservative gambling allowance in about an hour, I drove home with a small smile on my face knowing that we weren't all losers.