Dealing with Bad Beats

As much as we hate to admit it, poker Bad Beats are part and parcel of today's game of poker. If you haven't experienced a bad beat at the poker table, then I'm guessing you haven't been involved in many pots or you've been playing FAR too conservatively.

Suffering a bad beat can at best leave you feeling angry and frustrated. At worst, it can send you on tilt and affect the way you play your future hands. How can the guy who decided to throw all his chips into the middle of the table with just with just a 9 3 offsuit still end up walking off with your chips? How did he end up drawing the only two cards in the deck that would save him?

It's this sense of injustice, that needs to be dealt with to ensure that your game does not suffer in the long term. But what's the best way of dealing with Lady Luck leaving you? Well ideally you'd want to talk about it to get it off your chest, but that's not an option in poker circles. Your fellow players don't want to hear your poker bad-beat stories. They've got their own stories - they don't need to hear about yours.

So without the help of your fellow players, what other options are open to you? Well here are a few things that I've found have helped me in the past.

1. Set yourself a short time period to vent your frustration - if you're playing online, give yourself a minute to shout at the screen, wave your arms and generally do whatever else you feel you need to do to get it out of your system. Obviously I wouldn't advise doing this in a live poker room, as you'll be quickly marched to the nearest exit! Instead, push your chair back from the table. Sit out a couple of hands, get another drink from the bar and then come back to the table re-focused.
2. Think yourself lucky. No, really. You didn't do anything wrong and you got your chips in at the right time. If your opponent continues to play the same way, then you'll be getting your chips back very quickly. As Lou Krieger said "It's a sign that you are playing against opponents who continually take the worst of it, and if you can't beat someone who always takes the worst of it, you can't beat anyone."
3. If you're into playing online, then head over to somewhere like Carbon Poker. They operate a poker Bad Beat Jackpot, which at the time of writing currently stands at over $600,000. That way, if your monster hand does get beaten, the cash that you'll win in compensation means that you won't be moaning for long!

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