Despite the best efforts of Congress and the shifting tides of fads, poker is still a thing, and the World Series of Poker remains one of the world's singular competitions (we won't say "sports"). Nowhere else can a dude come in literally — and we mean that in the classic sense of the term — off the street and defeat the sport's most notable pros.

Of course, anybody who's ever played poker is familiar with the bad beat, the moment when the cards that had been running in your favor turn horribly, irrevocably against you. Like parents, everybody's got some bad beat stories, and like your fantasy team, nobody else is interested in hearing those stories.

That said, this is a rugged one here. Carter Gill, playing in the World Series of Poker in a round televised Tuesday night, thought he was about to double his winnings. And as you can see from the stats above, he had a 93 percent chance of winning the hand. In poker terms, that's as close as you can get to a dead-solid lock.

If you're not familiar with how no-limit hold 'em works, it's this: at any time, you can go all-in and bet your entire chip stack on a hand. If you win, boom, you've doubled your holdings. If you lose, well, you're out.

Gill lost. And the way that you can see his heart break in slow motion is a special kind of agony. Chin up, big fella, at least you played the game.

-Follow Jay Busbee on Twitter at @jaybusbee.-



[Via FTW]