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Every year, thousands of people descend upon Las Vegas in the hopes of winning one of the coveted bracelets (and the massive amount of prize money up for grabs) at the World Series of Poker.
This year, the action officially kicked off in Sin City at the end of May, which is when Paris and The Horseshoe officially welcomed competitors who will be participating in the dozens of tournaments that will be held in the lead-up to No Limit Hold’em Main Event that’s slated to kick off on July 3rd.
Poker is a game of both skill and chance, and while there are plenty of ways to gain an edge on your opponents at the table, there’s only so much you can do to avoid falling victim to a bad beat when you play enough.
Mateusz Moolhuizen learned that the hard way at the WSOP in 2022 courtesy of the river card that allowed Mike Jukich to rake in a massive pile of chips en route to winning a bracelet and close to $1 million in prize money. However, that has nothing on what recently transpired at this year’s event.
You don’t need to be a poker expert to know the odds of getting a royal flush on any given hand are incredibly low (649,739-to-1—or .000001539%—to be exact).
The odds of getting four-of-a-kind are slightly higher (0.168%), so while you need to be aware of some possible outcomes based on the community cards that are dealt, you can usually be pretty confident you have the best hand when you consider a royal or straight flush are the only things that are going to beat it.
As a result, it’s hard to blame the person who found themself in possession of quad queens on their first hand of the fourth day of the $1,000 buy-in “Mystery Millions” tournament for thinking they had the upper hand on everyone else.
Unfortunately for them, their opponent had already clinched a royal flush on the turn, which means we have an instant contender for “Bad Beat of the Year” honors.
[Barstool]