The Fresno Triple-A baseball team did indeed sell its stadium naming rights to Chukchansi Gold Resort & Casino, as this story proves.

In unrelated gambling news, friends of this blog started playing poker at 8 a.m. Sunday, and finally stopped at 2 a.m. Tuesday. A small rake was taken from each pot, and the 10 players who logged the most hours at the table before the end of Monday Night Football, got free admission to a final tournament that didn't end until 2 a.m. Tuesday.

Not a bad idea for the opening weekend of the NFL. We had four different football games playing in that one room on four different TVs. Actually being in the video game Millipede would have been less chaotic. The entire thing was a blur and I may or may not have eaten for two days.

For now, poker is still popular, and a fun time, but since so many people have been playing for so many years, everyone has dozens of bad-beat stories. (Quick definition: making a good play and getting beat by bad luck.) If poker finally fades away, it will only be because people are sick of listening to other players complain, and won't even want to see each other any more.

Here's my best bad-beat story ...

A couple years ago, I won a tournament at an establishment in Wisconsin. Around 40 players. No big deal. (As always, not for money.) The next week, at the same tournament, I got an Ace-King of clubs on the first hand. A guy bet. I raised. He called. The flop came Queen-Eight-Five, all of clubs. I flopped the "nuts" as they say. The best possible hand at that point.

Well the guy in the hand against me, went "All-in." I called and he showed he had pocket eights, meaning he had three eights. This is a bad beat story, as you know, and the river was a five, and he made a full house. That beat my flush and I was out on the first hand.

That's by no means the worst bad-beat story in the world. The odds were against it, but there were several cards he could have gotten to beat me. But to go from winning a tournament, to being the first person out on the very first hand, that makes that a decent story.

Can you top it? Let's hear yours?