A buddy I used to play with often had one of the best lines I’ve heard for dealing with the way the cards come out on a given night. “Poker is a violent game,” he would smile as he tossed his 80-20 favorite into the muck after losing a showdown. At the time, I thought he was vaguely nuts, but looking back on it, I envy his cool confidence. There are many ways to deal with a bad beat, and most of them are a waste of time and energy. Throwing a tantrum, or worse, throwing your laptop, doesn’t get you anywhere. So, how do we get to the point where we answer a bad beat with a smile?

I think it is important to note that simply expecting bad beats to be part of the game is not what I’m talking about here. Yes, that’s an important realization, but many people fall into the trap of the “EVERY TIME!” mentality. If you really think that you are going to lose every time you hold aces, you are never going to play them optimally. If Big Slick scares you, you’re better off playing go fish than poker.

When you embrace poker as a “violent game,” you are not just expecting the hard knocks and blows of bad beats, you are also embracing them. You know they are coming, you are ready for them, and you are ready to rise above them. What’s more, you know you are going to hand them out too. The difference being, you are going to sneak into a multi-way pot and sucker-punch somebody with a baby flush or hidden straight. You may lose that 80-20 now, but later you are going to punish the guy in the four seat who always slowplays his monsters.

Think of it as if you are a prize fighter and the hits keep on coming, but the harder they hit – the stronger you get. Eye of the tiger baby! The most impressive thing about this mindset is that when you embrace the inevitability of bad beats, they no longer have the power to throw you off your game. Don’t just resign yourself to the fact that you will suffer bad beats either. Know that they are coming and know that you will rise above them.

Of course, in tournament play you rarely have the luxury of absorbing more than one or two bad beats if you are playing big pots. In deep stack live tournaments or a rebuy online, where you have the opportunity to build a stack of 20-50 BBs, you might survive a few of these. Luck is a huge factor in any given hand or on any given night, but we play poker to win over the long haul.

I admit, I still lose my cool from time to time, but most of the time I simply try to shrug it off and move on quickly. If you approach the game from a cool mathematical perspective, a bad beat is simply a blip in your baseline of positive expectation. Myself, I am a bit more of a romantic than that. I do my best to study the math of the game because it is very useful and any player worth his salt should not ignore such a powerful tool. When it comes down to it though, I relish the moments where I can look at an opponent and “just know” what he is holding. I enjoy the stare downs and the verbal jousting. Poker is a game of wits and skill, and I do play it for money, but it's also just a game… try to enjoy it as such.

Poker has nothing on football, hockey, or even badminton in terms of physical violence. Absent some shady dealings in an underground game, the worst thing you will ever face at the poker table is a paper cut. It is a rough game nonetheless, and does take real mental toughness to succeed in poker. Managing your emotions and dealing with the ups and downs of luck as the cards come out can be just as important as reading your opponents or knowing what hand ranges are profitable to push with in a Sit & Go tournament. There are many tricks of the trade and I encourage you to go with what works for you. Next time someone lays a brutal beat on you, try to embrace the violent nature of the game and meet it with a smile and a gleam in your eye. Next time it could be you holding the seven deuce off-suit on a 7-7-2 board.

P.S. I highly recommend the Pocketfives Tilt Buddy.