Defying The Odds

By Eric Raskin

I’ve written in the past that I don’t like to tell bad-beat stories. But every now and then, I can’t help myself. So here goes with some bad-beat bitching.

(And for the record, this isn’t technically a bad-beat story; it’s a bad-beats—plural—story. It’s about a mind-boggling series of bad beats. So that’s why I can’t help but write about it. Anyway, on to the story.)

As I’ve mentioned in other blogs and editorials, my bread-and-butter is online heads-up sit-n-gos. I’m drawn to them because (a) heads-up is arguably the strongest part of my game, (b) they don’t take a major time commitment, and (c) there’s no sitting around waiting to play—I’m seeing flops nearly every hand and I don’t need to be in patient mode. And let’s face it, poker’s a lot more fun when you don’t have to be in patient mode.

Anyway, while I’d never claim I played “perfect poker” (at a WSOP Academy that I attended, Greg Raymer made the point that it’s impossible to play “perfect poker” for any extended period of time), I really was in the zone in this match. My opponent was folding to all of my bluffs and calling all of my value bets, and I was staying out of dangerous situations. Maybe the cards were just cooperating with me a lot, but as best I can tell, I was playing damned well and outmaneuvering him at every turn.

We each started with $1,500 in chips, and by the third level of blinds, I had him whittled down, holding about a $2,500-to-$500 advantage. Then I picked up a beautiful pair of aces. Even more beautifully, he pushed all in with A-8 of diamonds. Unless he had been unsuited, you simply can’t find a better pre-flop spot than that. I was an 88% favorite to end the match. But he turned a diamond flush and doubled up. Tough beat, but not the end of the world—it happens.

The next time we got it all in, I had about a $2,200-to-$800 chip lead. I was holding J-8 and turned a queen-high straight when a nine hit, and we got all the money in with my opponent having turned two pair with his 9-3. I can’t blame him for getting it all in there, but the fact is he was a 91%-9% underdog. Of course, he spiked his four-outer, hitting a three on the river to fill up.

Now he had the chip lead, but again I whittled him down and had him outchipped $2,100-to-$900 when we got it all in again—him holding A-2 suited, me holding pocket queens. I was a 68%-32% favorite this time, but he flopped an ace.

I crunched the numbers, and do you want to know what his chances of surviving all three all-ins were? Three-tenths of a percent. Yes, that’s right, in 997 out of 1,000 matches, I would have finished him on at least one of those three hands. In three matches out of 1,000, he survives. Un-friggin-believable.

And of course, the first time I got it all in with my tournament life at stake (down about $2,000 to $1,000), I lost. It was a coin flip, my deuces that I pushed with against his somewhat loose call with Q-J suited, he was a 53%-47% favorite, and he turned a queen to win the match.

Adding in that coin flip, he had less than a 0.2% chance of winning all four all-ins.

I told you it was the kind of bad-beat story that I just couldn’t help but tell.

Hopefully, I used up all of my bad luck for the week in one match.

And hopefully I haven’t jinxed myself by breaking the “no bad-beat story” rule and venting about it.