A bad beat – I believe this qualifies

At the recommendation of a few of my poker friends, I've started venturing back into the larger than 9 person tournament space. Last night, we were back at a 45 person SNG. I hadn't really played them much at all lately, the take longer and I'd been losing pretty steadily at them.

Early on in the tournament, I'd hit a huge pot and taken 3 people out when I flopped the nuts and 3 other people figured they could win gut shot straight draws (d'Oh!). I coasted along, cleaning up the dead money a few times, but not really see much for cards.

In the LB, I see this action. The UTG player limps in for 100, the next player raises to 300. They were both fairly new to the table so there wasn't history on them. It folds around to me and I find JJ. I can call that raise from the LB with that. The BB and the limper think for a while and fold. The flop comes 8 3 J. I check. Ziggy1623 raises to 500 bringing the pot to 1300, I raise to 1000, he goes all in for 1885 and I'm thinking GIN! I'm way out in front of anything he might have. I instantly call. Ziggy turns of 99. Holy cow! All of his chips with a pair of nines! According to Card Player's odds calculator, I'm ahead 96.67% to 3.33%. Ziggy told me later, he just about turned everything off to head to bed when he witnessed a Q and a 10 on the turn and river. He had hit the miracle straight.

I battled through and kept my composure. I finished 4^th in the tournament and Ziggy finished 1^st. He was very gracious in his suck out and we exchanged jabs about it for the rest of the tournament.