One of my favorite dinners at Talking Stick Casino in Scottsdale, AZ. is a plate called The Sampler.
It's a Mexican dish made up of flatbread and a special cheese sauce that you dip the bread in -- and it's delicious. But to get it you have to walk downstairs from the poker room to the Blue Coyote Cantina. There a Latin Jazz guitar player and vocalist entertains patrons while they drink and order food.
Talking Stick's poker room has a strict policy of giving poker players only 10 minutes absence from the tables. If you exceed that time limit, you are picked up and replaced by another player.
I left my stack of chips on the table and jokingly told the players, 'Don't hit the bad beat without me.' It totaled $10,000 and we were naturally interested in collecting that ready cash. Then I hurried downstairs to order the Sampler plate.
The cute waitress took my order, served me a glass of ice water, and I waited for the chef to deliver my food. When I picked up the plate, I hurried back to my table.
A floor man was poised behind my chair ready to pick up my chips. When he saw me, he smiled.
'Congratulations,' he said. 'You made it back by a whisker.'
The player sitting to my right said happily, 'We just hit the bad beat jackpot. Your player's share is $429. If you had been a minute later, you would have been picked up and would have been disqualified from the money.'
All I could do was give the table a silly grin and say, 'wow!'
An elderly Hispanic man in seat seven had made a royal club flush while the player in seat two, an Oriental, had collected four 10s. The dealer, a young Asian woman, was ecstatic. It was the first bad beat jackpot she had ever dealt.
All poker rooms have strict rules about who qualifies to share in a bad beat jackpot when it is hit. If you have a missed blind, for example, sorry -- you don't receive any of the jackpot money.
One other player had joined our table five minutes before the bad beat was hit. He collected a player's share.
I asked the dealer what she planned to spend her tip money on.
Flustered, she said, 'I don't know. It happened too fast. I am still shaking.'
I knew her feelings. I was a bit shaken myself when I realized how close I had come to missing out on the player's share.
Bad beat jackpots are one of a poker room's best perks, despite what Ante Up, a poker magazine, claims. Ante Up recently published an editorial that would keep bad beat jackpots at a limited amount. None of the poker players I have talked with agreed with the editorial. The bigger the bad beat jackpot, the more interest they have in playing poker. I totally agree with them.
I suddenly remembered my Sampler plate and began digging into the food.
'Chips anyone?' I said, passing the plate of chips around to my new found friends at the poker table. They dug in while we waited to be paid.
Author: Geno Lawrenzi Jr.
(Geno Lawrenzi Jr. is an international journalist, magazine author and ghostwriter and poker player who lives in Phoenx, AZ. He has published 2,000 articles in 50 magazines and 125 newspapers. If you want to share a gambling story or book idea with him, send an email to glawrenzi@gmail.com ).
