Deebing Not Steaming

By Freddy Deeb

AT T

HE VERY FIRST TELEVISED WORLD POKER TOUR tournament, I was at the final table, and I took three bad beats in a short period of time. I was extremely frustrated, and I was close to losing my cool. So I got up and took a walk for a few minutes. The blinds were huge, and every hand was so crucial, but I left the table anyway. This wasn’t like Jennifer Harman getting up from the table on the telecast of this year’s World Series Main Event, which she did at a time when the blinds were still fairly inconsequential. This was difficult to do because the antes and blinds were so huge in my situation. But I did it anyway because I needed to take a walk, cool off, and put those bad beats behind me.

It all comes down to how you’re feeling. If you feel like you have to take a walk, just take a walk. Most players wouldn’t suggest doing it at blinds that high, but everybody’s different. If you have to clear your head, you have to. It’s better than shoving all your chips in with five-high the next hand.

When you’re steaming, you’re not thinking about the 5-2 you’re playing, you’re still thinking about the K-K or A-A you lost with. That’s your excuse for doing it. People don’t always move on completely to the next hand. They let the previous hand linger with them. And that’s the worst thing you can do.

A lot of times, people pick up a big hand and they lose with it, and all of a sudden, they’re in seven out of the next 10 hands. Instead of just sitting back and waiting for another good hand, they get out of control and they steam, and they end up blowing off some more money, which is the worst thing to do. When you lose with a good hand, I recommend that you actually play a little more tight than normal for the next few hands. On the flip side, if I win a big hand, I raise the next hand, automatically.

When you’re at the table with a player who’s steaming, you want to play marginal hands against them and put the pressure on them. Most of the time, the flop will come down, he’ll have a weak hand, and normally you can raise and he’ll just fold because he played a bad hand and didn’t hit the flop.

We all get good hands and bad hands. And we all take bad beats. It doesn’t matter who you are, whether you’re a bad player or a great player, you always run into some bad beats. The key is to minimize your losses. I see all the time, a player picks up pocket kings, a bad flop comes down, and whereas I might have lost $700 on the hand, he’ll lose $7,000 because he doesn’t realize that the flop is so bad, two kings are almost worthless after that flop. It’s like they’re hanging around just to have some kind of a bad beat story and cry about it. Instead of crying about it afterward, they should be thinking about the hand constructively: What did I do wrong there? Why did I lose so much money on this hand? Should I have done that, or should I not have done that? People need to learn from a losing hand and process what happened instead of getting all emotional about it. Two big rules of mine to close with: You should never play when you’re tired, and you should never play when you’re drinking, because your emotions are low under those circumstances. When you’re losing, your morale is down—it’s the same thing. If you see yourself not playing well, you should pick up and go and play again another time.

Kassem “Freddy” Deeb captured the million-dollar first prize in the 4th Annual UltimateBet.com Poker Classic this past October.