These days it seems you can't talk to a poker player for more than 2 minutes whithout hearing a "bad beat" story. Even the internet is filled with blog entries and forum posts about how some jackal hit a miracle card and made someone sick. Well guess what? If you play poker for any serious amount of time you're gonna suffer some sick beats. But you're also gonna inflict some sick beats on your opponents. Rather than forget about the times where I may have starred as the "Jackal" in someone else's story, I'm choosing to celebrate my suck outs. If you were on the receiving end of one of these, I empathise with you, belive me, we've all been there.

Here are my greates hits:

1. 5-handed in a live tournament with top 3 getting paid I was second in chips and the action was folded around to me on the button. I looked down at pocket fives and made a standard raise. The small blind quickly folded and then the button, who was also chip leader at the time, went all in. I had been stealing a lot of blinds and I thought the button was just taking a stand with a hand like Ace-Rag, so I called. In retrospect it was a horrible call; there was no reason to risk my tournament life on that hand. What made things worse was that the button actually had pocket Kings. The button was smiling knowing that by taking out the second in chips he would be almost guaranteed first place since he would have all the other players heavily outchipped. Sure enough I rivered, not a five, but a FOUR CARD FLUSH!!! To add insult to injury, I ended up calling an all-in from the same player after another player had gone all-in over top. I eliminated both and the guy I sucked out on took 4th place, finishing just outside the money because he had the lowest stack going in.
   
   
2. In a "friendly-friendly" .25/.50 cash game at a buddy's house I called a 5$ pre-flop raise with K9 soooted. The action had been fast and loose and I felt I at least had 2 overs. The flop came 4 5 9 and the pre-flop raiser went all in for about 40$, for whatever reason I decided I was ahead and called him with my top pair. He shows me pocket 4s for a set. Turn comes a 9, river: King! Sick.
   
   
3. Last night, down to the money in a single table tourney I found myself short-stacked in the Big Blind with A 2. The small blind, who was on a massive chip stack, raised and I went all-in figuring he would raise almost any hand in his position and with an Ace in my hand I would be in ok shape even if he called. He did call and showed me A 3. The first four cards missed us both and then the river brought a 2. Hooray! I also hit a set on the turn with pocket 7s against pocket 8s in that same tourney against the host! Tsk tsk, but there was nothing we could do on that hand, we both played it correctly.

Those are just a small sampling of the mayhem I have brought to many a poker game. I purposely left out any online hands, just because I don't want anybody blaming a piece of software for my miracle saves.