Edward Norton Got Eliminated From the World Series of Poker On this BRUTAL Bad Beat

Edward Norton has been carrying a poker story around for decades, and it still makes him go quiet in the middle of telling it.

The setup is better than the ending. Norton and Matt Damon played the World Series of Poker together, and not as research for Rounders. The film was already shot.

"It was part of the run-up promoting the film," Norton told Rich, who wanted to know whether the studio had fronted the entry fee. Either the studio did or the tournament did, and Norton's explanation of why is the funniest part of the whole thing.

"In that era, it was not sexy," he said. "They didn't have a lot of celebrities coming to play poker, and Matt and I weren't even like big celebrities. We were what they could get."

Both of them lasted a while. Both of them went out in ways you do not forget.

Norton played a Johnny Chan tip, taking pocket nines on the button and betting them like they were something else entirely. "I bet it as though it was an ace king or something like that," he said. The flop brought a nine and a ten. Then a second ten arrived.

That is a full house that nobody at the table could see coming. Norton had chips on the man across from him, a player he identified as Surindar Singh, and when the call came and Norton turned his cards over, the room reacted the way rooms do when a giant is about to fall.

"The whole table exploded," Norton said. "They were like, he's going to take Surindar Singh out of the tournament."

Then Singh flipped quad tens.

Four of a kind against an unreadable boat. Rich, to his credit, asked whether Norton remembered the hand he busted out on, then answered his own question. How could he not.

The aftermath somehow made it worse. Singh found Norton later and told him the truth, that 99 times out of 100 the hand plays differently, that he had no idea what Norton was holding, that he was blown away.

Norton's description of the moment is the part that sells it. He was trying to play it cool at the table while everything went silent around him, a Saving Private Ryan moment in the middle of a card room.

"I was trying to play it off, but I just gut shot," he said. "When they talk about being gut shot, I was gut shot literally."

Damon's exit was no gentler, and it came against the toughest possible name. He moved all in before the flop holding pocket kings. Doyle Brunson had pocket aces. Nothing came up to save him.

Two actors, one promotional favor, and a pair of hands that would headline anybody's bad beat file. Norton is still turning it over on air, which tells you everything about how clean the beat was.