Wild and crazy hands are rare but lots of fun to see play out

Have you ever noticed that when a movie includes a poker game, the characters inevitably end up battling it out in a crazy hand? For instance, in 1994’s “Maverick,” the climax sees Mel Gibson’s title character draw one card to make a royal flush and beat both four eights and a straight flush.

Such hands are dramatic but also highly unlikely. In fact, “unlikely” isn’t really the right word, as they’re almost mathematically improbable — so much so that hardly anyone would argue with you if you called them impossible.

As someone who has spent more than 10 years playing poker and live-reporting tournaments for PokerNews.com, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen pots contested with a combination of four of a kind, a straight flush and a royal flush.

If such a hand takes place in a cash game, most cardrooms will award a bad beat jackpot. In tournament play, it only results in a great story for everyone there to tell. Such was the case in the 2019 World Series of Poker Circuit Seminole Casino Coconut Creek $1,700 Main Event in September.

On Day 1b of the tournament, in Level 6 ( blinds of 200- 400 plus an ante of 400), pro Evan Teitelbaum raised from under the gun, and the player in the big blind three-bet to 6,500. Teitelbaum responded with a four-bet to 13,000, and the player in the big blind moved all in.

Teitelbaum snap- called holding As Ac, which was way ahead of his opponent’s Ks Kh.

It was poker’s biggest cooler. As a player, I’ve been on both ends of it, and as a reporter, I’ve seen it play out hundreds of times. Usually the aces hold on to win the pot (81.7% of the time), while occasionally the kings will find a third to take the lead. (The kings have a 17.8% chance of coming from behind.) In rare occurrences, players will make a straight or flush.

In this hand, things played out in a manner I’d never seen before. The flop came down Ah Kd Kc to give Teitelbaum aces full of kings but his opponent quad kings. Had the players not gotten the chips in preflop, they surely would have after the monster flop. Unfortunately for Teitelbaum, he went from being a heavy favorite to drawing to a single out — the case ace left in the deck, which he’d hit just 4.4 percent of the time.

As if the flop wasn’t rare enough, the hand got even wilder after the dealer burned and turned the Ad! It was Teitelbaum’s gin card to give him back the lead with a bigger four of a kind. The quad kings’ hammerlock on the hand went up in smoke.

A meaningless 4s was run out on the river, and Teitelbaum scored the knockout in what not only turned out to be the craziest hand of the tournament, but one of the rarest hands ever captured by the PokerNews live-reporting team.