Live poker

I was playing in the weekly $10,000 guaranteed tournament at the Horseshoe Casino Tunica yesterday when suddenly a big noise erupted from a table in the main room.

"I bet somebody hit the bad beat jackpot," a player said, and he was right.

In the $4/8 limit hold'em game, a husband (sitting in seat three) and a wife (in seat eight) had done it. He had quad aces and she had a Royal Flush. No wonder everyone was excited. I wondered in on break and heard that between the two, they had won $17K. Not bad for an afternoon playing poker. The players' share was $387.

A player I know (Bill) was sitting at the table. He usually plays the tournament, but hadn't because he was waiting for the Omaha-8 game to kick off. "Hey, I got 9th place money for the tournament," he quipped.

How did I do in the tournament? I was knocked out when we were down to two tables. My Q-Q lost to J-J when I hit another queen. There were four hearts on the board and the villain had the ♥J for the flush. Earlier, I lost with A-Q to A-10 all-in preflop (10 on the river). Some days it goes like that.