1. Ray Romano Poker Royal Flush Kit
2. Ray Romano Poker Royal Flush Machine
3. Ray Romano Poker Royal Flush Toilet

Ray Romano live updates from poker tournaments. ABOUT CARDPLAYER, THE POKER AUTHORITY CardPlayer.com is the world's oldest and most well respected poker magazine and online poker guide.Since 1988. John Grochowski is the best-selling author of The Craps Answer Book, The Slot Machine Answer Book and The Video Poker Answer Book. His weekly column is syndicated to newspapers and Web sites, and he contributes to many of the major magazines and newspapers in the gaming field, including Midwest Gaming and Travel, Slot Manager, Casino Journal, Strictly Slots and Casino Player.

Anyone who has spent a decent amount of time playing poker knows that bad beats happen – maybe your aces get cracked, or you lose some important coin-flip hands. Sometimes the deck just runs out in such a way that you’re forced to go broke with the second-best hand. It happens.

It rarely happens quite like this, though.

Aces vs. aces for a cool $1 million

What’s the biggest buy-in tournament you’ve ever played? Ever taken a shot at the $215 Weekly Sunday Guarantee on WSOP.com? (You can’t play PA online poker or at PA online casinos yet, but you may be be able to next year, if the legislature passes a law this fall.)

Well, imagine playing a tournament with a buy-in almost 5,000 times that. A hefty $1 million entry fee to the World Series of Poker’s Big One For One Drop made it the largest-ever WSOP event.

Playing in that tournament is really, really, really not a great time to offend the poker gods, which is what Conor Drinan must have done to have been on the receiving end of this extremely cruel bad beat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO86oLN3ZsU

Ray Romano Poker Royal Flush Kit

Straight outta Hollywood

Often, poker movies get a lot of stick from fans of the game for their unrealistic showdowns – quads against full house against flush, more straight flushes than you can shake a stick at… it would just never happen in real life, would it?

Don’t tell that to Justin Phillips, who scooped a huge pot at the 2008 WSOP Main Event after rivering a royal flush against nothing less than four aces. To top off the Hollywood vibe of the hand, Ray Romano was there to witness this 1 in 2.7 billion event.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XunAlp2azhA

The moment poker went mainstream

It seems like poker has always been on TV, and that the game has always been a staple of online casinos.

Before 2003, poker was pretty niche – that all changed with the man bearing the aptronym to end all aptronyms, Chris Moneymaker. The amateur player made it all the way to the heads-up stage of the 2003 WSOP, playing for a first prize of $2.5 million.

Playing against Sam Farha, who looked every bit the poker professional with his sharp suits and cigars, Moneymaker proved a more than formidable opponent as this ballsy bluff shows.

Chris went on to win the whole tournament, and it’s him you have to thank for being able to play online at WSOP.com.

Ray Romano Poker Royal Flush Machine

A million-dollar cold deck

In this super-high-stakes showdown, with blinds of $1,000/$2,000 and six-figure chip stacks, action was inevitable.

Ray Romano Poker Royal Flush Toilet

What no one expected was the largest pot ever televised, as Phil Ivey and Tom “durrrr” Dwan contested a hand worth $1,108,500 in real dollars. It took the world’s most fortuitous card to give both players a monster hand, and the fallout was immense.