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Bad Beat Poker Stories - Stop Telling Them
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Author: Marc Weinberg
The main reason why you should never tell other poker players about your bad beats is that they don't care, and if they are interested it is only to derive an almost perverse pleasure from listening to your miserable tales. Take it from me, the one thing you will never get is true sympathy, and nor should you.
There are really very few circumstances that qualify as a bad beat. I wrote about a hand that Al Crux lost to TJ Cloutier and that qualifies as a true bad beat. Actually anyone who loses a hand to TJ can stand in line (that's a joke by the way - he seems like a great guy and he is a mountain of a man even in his dotage, so best to include these parenthetical remarks and hope that he doesn't know what the word "dotage" means).
Most bad beat stories hinge on a player not comprehending the nature of community poker games and how they work. See, I'll tell you a big poker secret: They only pay out the winner after the fifth card is dealt. Prior to the infamous 'river' card the race is not yet run, and the game is not yet over. That fat lady hasn't even waddled on stage yet, let alone parted those puffy lips to warble her dainty tune (fat chicks always have dainty voices, maybe because they think it somehow makes them smaller).
Bad beat storytellers used to be familiar to one and all in the wonderful world of gambling. They were the same guys who went to the track, lost their life savings betting horses, but returned with "hard-luck stories" about how their horse fell down in the last stride, how they picked up the wrong ticket, lost a winning ticket, bet the 5 horse when they meant to bet the 4 horse, and many, many more.
The analogy is so useful that I shall now stretch it way beyond its natural life and limitations to make several obvious points, but hopefully in an amusing fashion.
In horse racing the best horse often does not win a given race. Secretariat lost a lot of races. Native Dancer lost the Kentucky Derby. Dick Francis was going to win the Grand National by a distance when his horse really did fall just before the finish line (stepped into a hole in the track, another true bad beat). But they were the best horses going into the gates - they were te equine equivalents of pocket Aces, people!
Here's a terribly sad story that occurs in online poker about as often as some Biafran keeling over from famine: You start with AK and your opponent calls you with 27 and beats you with a 2 on the river. See, what's happening here is that you have the best horse now, but the race is still to be run and both of you still have two live cards apiece, plus your opponent wasn't that big of an underdog to win. You didn't even have a pair, so what are you complaining about?
Eevn worse: You start with AA and your opponent starts with A2 and three other guys at the table start laughing because they all mucked 2's, and you still lose even when the flop comes A 3 K - now you have less of a contest, but it still isn't over. Sometimes there is a 4 and 5 waiting to do a runner-runner right at you. It's like your horse is a Triple Crown winner ridden by Jerry Bailey. There's only one other horse in the race, and he has three legs, a nagging cough, and is ridden by a headless Chris Antley.
You should win these races, and you could feel aggrieved if you don't, but that's (ahem) why they run the race / play the game / pay the moron six figures to spout the cliche in the first place (not me, I yearn for six figures in any major currency, I'm talking about the Chris Berman's of the world.)
Let's even go so far as to say that you're way ahead after the turn in your no-limit hold'em $80 million tournament, and you're on the bubble, with only one little card to come. Imagine it was...oh, a horse race, let's say off the top of my head. Your nag leads with a furlong or an 1/8th of a mile for all you non-racing types to go. That's still 200m (there, now everyone should know where the horse is) or a lifetime in a horse race. Horses with late speed (those damn drawing hands) can close to win from nowhere. Horses on the lead can tire and stop dead in their tracks. You don't hear too many horse players whining about how they had the lead coming around the bend but ended up losing. So, if you're ahead on the turn and lose, you should consider shutting up, not crying, and carrying on.
It happens all the time. You can take a snapshot of any race and say that the person / car / horse that was behind "got lucky" because they caught up to win. Or you could bemoan the fact that the leader didn't hang on to win. That's why the only snapshot that counts is on the finish line.
Do you have the best hand after the river? Congratulations, you win according to the rules of poker. Did you have the best hand until the river (but see, you may have only had the best hand pre-flop, then player number 2 was in front on the flop, player number 3 took the lead on the turn, and player number 4 ultimately won it all - so what did you have, honestly?) - here you go: You win nothing, and while you don't have to like it you'll only become a figure of fun, a bigger laughing stock than the President, unless you deal with it like a big boy.
Poker players refuse to recognize that probability theory may not come through for them that one time they decide to utilize it. You hope to have the best of a bet and make that bet countless times, but you should understand that in any one instance those odds might not bear much of a likeness to the final outcome. You were a 6 to 1 underdog to make your hand, and you won - that's not worth a "WOW" or an "LOL" or a "This site is %$& rigged!" It happens once every seven hands, and thousands of hands are dealt per minute in online poker rooms, so it happens quite a lot. It's like life, whic can be slightly unlucky, because individuals and their experiences are not statistically relevant in the face of probability.
You should try getting used to these ideas because your one brilliant poker hand is simply a single star where probability is the sky of not the universe (that sounds biblical and I think it was God who first came up with this metaphor when he was telling Abraham about the hidden power of his loins, so mad props where they are due).
Gosh, that's a beautiful way to end this poker lesson. Now go and learn it, otherwise you're going to have so many hard-luck stories you might end up forgetting how to win.
Related Poker Articles And News Items:
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> Harrington On Hold'em, Help My Poker!
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