Well I will start off by introducing myself. My name's Dave and I am from a town called Lake Villa, IL and am currently living in St. Louis. I started playing poker sometime last year and have been playing quite a bit ever since. A good friend of mine, who plays the big 25 50 game on Ultimate Bet, taught me the game, and I have been lucky enough to surround myself with some very knowledgeable players who are constantly helping me improve. I decided I would make my first blog about something that is, in my opinion, one of the biggest parts of the game: handling beats.

A few weeks ago I was in Vegas with a few buddies of mine for the first time. The trip was great--I lost every time I sat, but there's no better place to drop some money. In between all the losing, I received a piece of advice that has really changed my outlook on "running bad," and it turned out to be one of the most important things I've learned in my young poker career. I was wandering around the Bellagio with my buddy Brian around 7 am and we saw Freddie Deeb leaning on a craps table by himself, drinking some cognac and smoking. Brian plays online with Freddie all the time, so I talked him into going over and introducing himself. Freddie didn't seemed too thrilled at first, but once he found out who Brian was, he couldn't have been nicer to the both of us. Freddie claimed he hated telling poker stories, but then he went on for the next two hours with numerous hand scenarios. Being the poker dork I am, I found it all quite funny and interesting. <READMORE>

During this time, Freddie had brought us to the nearest bar, and we had started drinking with him as we were talking about some of the beats that we had taken over the course of the trip. Freddie would nod his head and say, "sucks," every now and then; thanks for being so sympathetic, Freddie.

When we were done, he said something that really opened my eyes, and this is what I would like to share with you. He stopped our talking and said, "Hey let me tell you something about beats: they happen and they suck. Don't tell bad beat stories, they are downers." He went on to give us his own view on beats. Who knows, maybe it was the cognac talkin or maybe this is really his view. He said, "I've taken a million beats I could tell you about but you know what, I'm sure you dont care to hear them and I don't want to tell them. The fact is I don't f---in care about beats anymore, they happen. There is nothing you can do to avoid them; if you get your money in with the best and lose, f--k it. I could go broke taking beats and not care because I know I will get some money and run that money up because the beats end and I am confident that I am better than the players I am playing against and in the long run I will beat them." He apologized to us for taking a while to get to the point he was trying to make which was, "Have the confidence that you are better than who you are playing and in the long run, you'll end up on top, so don't worry so much, good play wins out in the end."

This really hit home with me, and I have thought about it quite a bit. Maybe, being a young player, I am still not where I need to be, mentally, but I hope that Freddy's advice can be helpful to someone else because it has made me stop fretting so much over things I can't control.

Dave Rogowski (A.K.A. Denny Lemieux) is a sophomore, majoring in Education, at Saint Louis University. Poker is his primary source of income, and he can be found playing at Pokerstars as JesusQntana, at Paradise playing as JesusQntana, at PartyPoker as TheLopper, and at UltimateBet playing as TheLopper or Denny Lemieux. You can reach him by emailing rogowski@slu.edu
</READMORE>