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Dealing With Bad Beats in No Limit Texas Holdem Poker
So there you are pre-flop with 88 on the button, and you call a small raise.
Three players see the flop, all of which are more than 100 big blinds deep
(large stacks). The flop comes J87 with a rainbow of suits. Perfect. The
player who raised leads raise a solid pot sized bet – thinking there’s no way
(unfortunately) that anyone will call such a large raise. Player 1 shoves all in
and player 2 calls! Checking out the situation for a moment, you figure if
someone has JJ its fair to say that you will go broke and you are certainly
willing to take that chance. You’ve been waiting for a monster and a caller all
night. You call. Drum roll please. The cards flip over. Player one has AJ and
player 2 has QJ! You are counting your chips. The turn comes a harmless T
and the river a 9. Ship to daddy! Wait – why did the chips go that way? OH
NO! A runner-runner straight! The lucky SOB with the worst hand pre-flop.
Before throwing your laptop, let’s evaluate a bit. You were about 97% to win
that hand when the money went in on the flop. The winner had a little better
than a 2.6% chance to catch another J or the straight by the river, and the AJ
player less than 1%. How could this happen? It the online poker site rigged?
The answers are it can and does happen and no the sites are not rigged. If
you have a 3% chance of losing this hand then that’s exactly, in the long run,
how often you will lose with it. If it can happen it WILL happen – 3 out of 100
times (over time) to be exact. Here come that facts about bad beats and here
is how to deal with them.
Allow us to digress to a much simpler example. You have AA and your single
opponent has KK and you are both all in pre-flop for $50 each. You are an
82% favorite. Now, instead of hoping like crazy that you’re going to win this
hand – look away. It doesn’t matter. Fortunately, you get to play poker
tomorrow, next week, and next month. You are in it for the long haul. Simply
put, every time you are in this exact scenario, you will make an average of
$41 each time. So after 1000 times, your profit on this hand will be very close
to $41,000! The part that people get stuck on is that your $41 doesn’t come
in perfect order. In fact, the order can be and is most often pretty darn jacked
up.
Knowing that you are going to win 4 out of 5 times is pretty cool but it still
hurts when you lose. Wait. Why? You KNOW that you will lose this hand 1 out
of 5 times. You already KNOW this. You also know that these losses could
come in any order, including a few in a row. I’ll be blunt. Since you know that
you will lose a certain amount of these and other hands, why would you get
mad when you lose them? Explain this to me. I don’t get it. Why even play if
you are going to get mad at this?
Do you see where I’m going? Stop torturing yourself, hoping and wishing for
the cards to fall in your favor. Stop, I said. Get your money in right, look away,
rinse/repeat. Stop berating the guy who went in with A3 against your aces
and caught a couple of threes on the board. Even a comment like “well hey
buddy at least I got it in right” after he apologizes is not a good idea. The last
thing you want him to do is to stop getting it in wrong. Be a cold and brutal
money making machine. If after 20,000 hands you are still behind it is not
because of the bad beats but because you need to fix up your game a bit. My
free videos can help with that, and so can rakeback.
McStackn
So there you are pre-flop with 88 on the button, and you call a small raise.
Three players see the flop, all of which are more than 100 big blinds deep
(large stacks). The flop comes J87 with a rainbow of suits. Perfect. The
player who raised leads raise a solid pot sized bet – thinking there’s no way
(unfortunately) that anyone will call such a large raise. Player 1 shoves all in
and player 2 calls! Checking out the situation for a moment, you figure if
someone has JJ its fair to say that you will go broke and you are certainly
willing to take that chance. You’ve been waiting for a monster and a caller all
night. You call. Drum roll please. The cards flip over. Player one has AJ and
player 2 has QJ! You are counting your chips. The turn comes a harmless T
and the river a 9. Ship to daddy! Wait – why did the chips go that way? OH
NO! A runner-runner straight! The lucky SOB with the worst hand pre-flop.
Before throwing your laptop, let’s evaluate a bit. You were about 97% to win
that hand when the money went in on the flop. The winner had a little better
than a 2.6% chance to catch another J or the straight by the river, and the AJ
player less than 1%. How could this happen? It the online poker site rigged?
The answers are it can and does happen and no the sites are not rigged. If
you have a 3% chance of losing this hand then that’s exactly, in the long run,
how often you will lose with it. If it can happen it WILL happen – 3 out of 100
times (over time) to be exact. Here come that facts about bad beats and here
is how to deal with them.
Allow us to digress to a much simpler example. You have AA and your single
opponent has KK and you are both all in pre-flop for $50 each. You are an
82% favorite. Now, instead of hoping like crazy that you’re going to win this
hand – look away. It doesn’t matter. Fortunately, you get to play poker
tomorrow, next week, and next month. You are in it for the long haul. Simply
put, every time you are in this exact scenario, you will make an average of
$41 each time. So after 1000 times, your profit on this hand will be very close
to $41,000! The part that people get stuck on is that your $41 doesn’t come
in perfect order. In fact, the order can be and is most often pretty darn jacked
up.
Knowing that you are going to win 4 out of 5 times is pretty cool but it still
hurts when you lose. Wait. Why? You KNOW that you will lose this hand 1 out
of 5 times. You already KNOW this. You also know that these losses could
come in any order, including a few in a row. I’ll be blunt. Since you know that
you will lose a certain amount of these and other hands, why would you get
mad when you lose them? Explain this to me. I don’t get it. Why even play if
you are going to get mad at this?
Do you see where I’m going? Stop torturing yourself, hoping and wishing for
the cards to fall in your favor. Stop, I said. Get your money in right, look away,
rinse/repeat. Stop berating the guy who went in with A3 against your aces
and caught a couple of threes on the board. Even a comment like “well hey
buddy at least I got it in right” after he apologizes is not a good idea. The last
thing you want him to do is to stop getting it in wrong. Be a cold and brutal
money making machine. If after 20,000 hands you are still behind it is not
because of the bad beats but because you need to fix up your game a bit. My
free videos can help with that, and so can rakeback.
McStackn
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