Worst River of my life

[bomblade]

I have 77 in the cutoff. 3 limpers before me. SB completes and BB raises. 20-40 decent game. Good action. Flop comes 974, all hearts. BB bets and all call, I raise and BB reraises and knocks out all the others. We're heads up on the turn, which pairs the 9's. BB bets out.
I'm in the 4 seat and he's in the 8. We've had many battles throughout the marathon session, and we're both staring at each other trying to pick up a read. I am fairly certain he has AA, with the A of hearts. At this point though, he could have any overpair and the result would be the same.
I raise the turn, and he takes a minute or two and calls.
The river is a 3rd nine. So the board is 99974, three hearts and my had crushed.
If this pot is checked to you, what do you do?

[gaylord focker]

I Check.

[Ulysses]

This must be a trick question. Check.

[DiamondDave]

No way he's folding anything that beats you.

[Gabe]

Um, check? This is really the worst? Of you life?

[bomblade]

It ranks up as one of the worst. The way you say it, you make out like this isn't a terrible river card. With the size of the pot in relation to the number of outs that can beat me, I'd definitely say it ranks up as one of the worst.
As for my play on the river, I planned on checking, and so I did. He turned over AA, as I figured, and he took the nice pot.

[Ulysses]

[ QUOTE ]
It ranks up as one of the worst. The way you say it, you make out like this isn't a terrible river card. With the size of the pot in relation to the number of outs that can beat me, I'd definitely say it ranks up as one of the worst.

[/ QUOTE ]

So, he has two nines and two two Aces that win him the pot on the river. That's 4 out of the 44 cards in the deck, so this will happen 1 out of every 11 times you're in this situation. As you'll learn, losing to 4-outers isn't really a very big deal.

On the flop, if he has Ah, he's going to win 1/3 of the time by the time you get to the river. So, again, losing this hand isn't really a big deal.

Of course, it sucks when you flop a set and turn a full house and still lose. But it happens.

[bomblade]

Losing 4 outers on the river isn't common. 1 out of 11 times aren't great odds by any means. 1 out of 11 doesn't mean that out of 11 times you're in a hand, you'll be beat once on the river to an underdog hand. What that means is that out of 11 times I'm in the same situation, where 4 cards can beat me on the river, I'll lose once. This doesn't occur every session that I'm even in this situation. Being in this situation 11 times doesn't necessarily mean that all 11 times the pot is going to be 7+ BBs. My point is that it is a big deal, and it was a pretty large bad beat. (And I never said this type of hand is impossible to have happen or that I was overly shocked by the outcome)