Why Me? A Perspective on Bad Beats
10 people are left in the Sunday Million on PokerStars. Your 2,000,000 chips puts you solidly in third place. However, two to your left is the chip-leader, who has been running over the table with constant aggression.
Then, bingo! You look down at KK. As it folds around to the button, you make a standard three times the big blind raise. After the small blind folds, the big blind quickly shoves all of his chips in the middle. You make the call, and upon seeing his A9, the fresh new car smell is already in the air.
Beats such as these are no rarity in poker. Any player who has been around the block at least once has seen it many times. People often wonder how they can be a great player when such beats “happen every time.” What great players have is the correct perspective on such hands. There are a few things that a great player must realize in order to cope with the bad-beats of poker over the course of a lifetime.
Bad beats happen:
The main reason that poker is such a popular game is the fact that anyone can win on any given day, and that any two cards can win a single hand. Bad beats are a part of poker, plain and simple. Learn to deal with them or find a new game.
What can I learn from the hand?:
Many times in a hand that seems to be a terrible beat, there is something to be learned. Questions you need to ask yourself are:
-Did I raise pre-flop?
-Did I raise enough?
-Did I bet enough to give my opponents an incorrect price for their draws?
Although it may not have changed how the hand ended up, it is important to learn from everything you can when playing the game of poker. Make it a habit to save hand histories and discuss them with friends. On top of that, use programs like PokerTracker or PokerOffice to analyze your play.
The money went in when I was in front:
All a good poker player can do is to get his or her money in with a statistical advantage over their opponents. You should be completely happy with yourself if you can accomplish this feat more times than not. You have outplayed and manipulated your opponents, and by being able to get all the money in with the best of it, you are on the road to long-term profit, regardless of the result of any individual hand.
Damn the Results:
A great player once told me, “Play the hand to the best of your ability, and damn the results.” Nothing is more important than this statement. The results of one hand do not in any way, shape, or form, indicate how a hand was played. If a person consistently gets in with the best statistical hand, positive results will follow.
The perspective, or understanding, that great players have of “bad beats” also includes many things that may not be apparent to the average or casual player. One thing that a player must understand is the true meaning of the word “dominated.” In a literal sense, dominated means “to enjoy a commanding, controlling position.” In poker, how much of a favorite does it take to be in command of a hand? Many players do not have a sense of domination when considering bad-beats.
For example, consider our previous hand – A9 against KK. The kings will win 67.57% of the time, while the A9 takes down the pot 32.07% of the time (a split occurs 0.36% of the time). Basically the kings are going to scoop 2 out of 3 pots. Look at it this way: suppose that 32.07% of time you ate egg salad for lunch, you would be sick for the rest of the day. Would you be surprised to get sick when you ate it? No, of course not. There is a one in 3 chance you are going to be spending your evening in the bathroom. Now, consider a hand more along the lines of Aces versus A9 suited. Aces are a 93.27% favorite. The difference in the two examples is being a 2:1 favorite and being an 18:1 favorite.
Rivered? Turned? Flopped? It’s all the same:
Another key factor to coping with bad-beats is being able to understand that it does not matter what street your opponents hand improves on relative to when the majority of the money went into the pot. In regards to pre-flop play, Ace-Nine suited seems a much tougher beat when your opponent hits arunner-runner flush on your King-King. But, this is no different than your opponent getting an Ace as the door card, if all the money was in the middle before the flop. The 32.07% chance to win the hand incorporates every possible scenario in which A9 suited beats KK.
Another common complaint from multi-table-tournament (MTT) players is that they always seem to go out with the best of it. However, when diving into the statistics of MTTs, you may find that it is more-so a “bad-beat” when you win a tournament after winning multiple 67%/33% scenarios. It is more likely for you to lose one all in as a 2:1 favorite over the course of an MTT than it is likely for you to win every 2:1 favorite scenario. Over the course of an MTT, there are many times when a player does get his/her chips in the middle as a 2:1 favorite, whether it be Ace-X against a pair bigger than X, top pair against a flush draw with no live cards, or an open-ended straight draw. Over, say six of these situations, you are more likely to lose one than you are to win them all. In MTTs, you can expect to lose six of eighteen out of thesituations where you are a 2:1 favorite. However, you can expect to lose only one when you’re an 18:1 favorite. The math is simple, but the perspective on how often a bad-beat should happen and how often a bad-beat does happen is a very complex issue.
The fact is that bad-beats are a part of the game of poker. The negative aspects of beats come from the psychology behind them. The human brain being what it is, however, means that you’re much more likely to remember the beats you suffer than the beats you deal to other players.
