Worst bad-beat stories

My friend Memphis MOJO writes about having recently been told of one of those incredibly rare bad beats that was not just runner-runner, but "perfect-perfect"; i.e., the player behind on the flop had to catch two exact cards on the turn and river in order to win. Mojo ends his post asking whether there are worse bad-beat stories than that.

Well, it kind of depends on how you classify degrees of badness. But for my money, I would nominate two.

First is the one that I related having heard about here (under the second bold sub-heading). See also the comments for a bit of possible further confirmation that the story is a true one.

Second is a story told many times by T.J. Cloutier. The only place I've seen it in print is in a really interesting but relatively little-known book, The Best Hand I Ever Played: 52 Winning Poker Lessons from the World's Greatest Players, by Steve Rosenbloom, published in 2005. Here's the story, from page 30:

It was against Al Krux, a cash game at the Bicycle Club about ten years ago. No Limit Hold'em. He hadn't won a pot all day. He had, like, $445 left or something and he moved all in. The guy two to his left was getting a massage. He lifted his head up and looked at it and decided not to call and threw it away. The massage girl saw the hand too.

It got around to me on the button. I had two 10's and I said, hell, I'll call him because this is his last money and he might not have too much. So I call. Now, the dealer didn't see that I made the call and she dropped the deck on the muck. That means she had to reshuffle all the cards.

The flop came K-10-4. I had two 10's. I flopped three 10's. He had two kings, so he had flopped three kings. The fourth card was a 10, so I had four 10's and I beat him in this pot.

But that's not the kicker. The kicker is, you remember the guy who was looking at his hand and getting a massage? He had the other two 10's and had thrown them away. He told us he had thrown two 10's away, and the massage girl said, "This guy threw away two 10's." So that meant the dealer had to make a mistake and drop the deck and reshuffle those 10's back in for Al to lose this hand to me. It's the worst beat in the history of poker.

Needless to say, I never won another hand that night, but I beat him out of his last $445. Story of a lifetime.

This one isn't technically a bad beat, I suppose, because both hands had pretty good equity when all the chips went in pre-flop. But Daniel Negreanu after the flop calling for two running perfect cards to make a straight flush, and getting both of them, is pretty damn unbelievable. This was in the first year of the NBC Heads-Up Championship:

As for my personal experience, I think that this hand was, in mathematical terms, the worst beat I've ever taken. The worst I can remember ever inflicting on an opponent was this hand, in which I put all my chips in on the flop as a 62:1 underdog, and caught a miraculous runner-runner combination to win. Almost as bad was when I went runner-runner full house to beat two opponents, both of whom had flopped flushes.

I have hit a one-outer on the river exactly one time, and sort of expect that it will never happen again. See story here.

I have been on the bad side of quads over quads one time, as told here.

In one remarkable session at the Sahara I folded what would have been quads for one high-hand jackpot, and would have made a straight flush for a second jackpot if my opponent had not folded. See story here.

Those are the best I can come up with, Mojo. What do you think?