The hand, as described by Blair on Twitter, and his answer follow.
"KJ in BB. SB raises I call. Flop KJ7. We get it all in and he shows KK. Ugh."
I agree. The term "bad beat" was LVA’s choice, not mine, although I did have some choice words when I saw my opponent's hand. The correct term for this result is "running into a cooler", or "cold deck", although that’s not completely accurate either as I'll explain below. A "bad beat" is when a hand that is way ahead gets beat in an improbable fashion. For example, two players flop sets in hold ’em, but the player with the bottom set wins when he makes quads on the turn or river. Ouch! A cooler is a deck that is set up away from the table and is slipped in to fleece an unsuspecting player by giving him a strong hand that will get beat by an even stronger hand. The reason these set-up decks are called coolers is that they haven't been handled in the game, so the cards are cooler to the touch.
Poker players, being the whiney creatures that they are, need to bemoan a hand that goes down in a way that folding is out of the question, but when they play and lose it costs them a lot of chips. So cooler, while not technically accurate (because it hasn't been pre-set), has become part of the vernacular to describe such instances. The hand I was eliminated on was such a hand. In fact, as the hands were exposed, eventual runner-up Matt Marafioti exclaimed, "Oh, what a f***ing cooler!"
I once played with a guy who told me he worked for Tony Spilotro in the bad old days of Vegas poker. His job was to sit upstairs and set up coolers to be slipped into the big games at the Dunes. Poker in today’s public card rooms is much safer than in the old days. There are procedures in place that safeguard against many of the cheating methods that used to be common. To prevent coolers, any time a new deck is brought into the game the dealer is supposed to scramble, or thoroughly mix the cards by spreading them out and mixing them around, before picking them up to shuffle. The technical term is "washing" the cards. If it’s a deck that hasn’t been used in the game previously, the cards should be set up in order by rank and suits and the dealer should spread them face up and make sure all the cards are there, then turn them over and check the backs of the cards to make sure they’re all the same color and that they’re uniform. If you’re ever in a game where a new deck is introduced and the dealer just picks them up and shuffles, be very wary.
Blair Rodman is the co-author of Kill Phil. He's currently working on a new book for beginners that we're serializing at LVAPoker.com. Follow Blair on Twitter at @blairrodman.
