[ScottMc]

I read tons of forums and one thing they all have in common is "The Bad Beat" posts and threads. However after reading several of them I often find that the beat the player took was not particularly a bad beat at all.

I am not the foremost expert on poker. I have however played close to 500 hands a night 4-6 nights a week for 3 years or roughly half a million hands.. I will let you do the math. I have seen every hand you could ever get, I have seen every draw possible and I have seen amazing cards fall to kill me but I very rarely every use the words bad beat to describe them... even when they hit a 1 outer on me.

Here are some examples of bad beats. and yes I remember every detail like I was sitting there last night right down to the shirt the guy was wearing

I was at the Stardust Casino in 2003 August. I was playing $2000 max buy in NL and had been sitting for close to 8 hours. I had only managed to double my stack and was sitting at a little over $4000 when I was dealt AQ suited in the cut-off and was looking at a $60 raise. I made it $180 to go and it was all folds back to the raiser and he called it. The flop came AAQ for a flopped boat. The other guy made it $300 to go which set off bells in my head. He can only have very few hands here AQ just like me in which case we chop it QQ in which case he is dead to me and I clean house and last AK in which he has 3 outs in the deck making me a 90% favorite in the hand. I pop it to $600 and he raises to $1200. At this point I put him on QQ and raise him all in which he calls almost as soon as I say it. I was a little off on his hand, He had AK and was about to puke on the table until the Dealer dropped the turn card as the K of spades ending my day.

As he was raking the chips and I was packing to leave 2 of the other players piped up and said that they had both mucked K's leaving only the one King in the deck as the turn card. That is only one of 2 hands I have ever really considered a bad beat.

What is it that YOU consider a bad beat?