The Editor’s Blog–Feeling Good About Bad Beats

By Eric Raskin
August 11, 2008

A lot of poker players have a “no bad beat story” policy—they won’t tell the tales of their own bad beats, and they sure as hell don’t want to hear yours.

I mostly agree with that policy. I don’t want to hear the bad beat stories of random strangers, and I don’t want to subject them to my own. But my exception is that I have one close friend with whom I routinely discuss my play and his play after a session, and we’re allowed to vent about our bad beats with each other. Hey, when the beats are particularly brutal, it’s unhealthy not to tell someone.

Anyway, I won’t subject the allinmag.com readers to my bad beat stories, but I will just say that I had a two-day stretch last week where the beats were coming non-stop and, even though I’m very conservative with my bankroll management—I never put more than 5% at risk at once, and usually it’s more like 2%–I lost almost 15% of my bankroll at a particular Web site in just a couple of days.

Lately, I’ve been focusing on heads-up sit-n-gos, and it was just game after game where I got my opponents all in, frequently after the flop with five outs or less, and they just kept hitting their outs. It’s tough to beat an opponent twice in a heads-up match, and that’s precisely what you have to do when he sucks out and doubles up into the chip lead; you have to start over and find a way to beat him a second time. (And you have to pray that he doesn’t get lucky again and force you to beat him a third time.)

But here’s the thing: When I’m taking an inordinate amount of bad beats, after I get over the initial anger, I start to feel good about my game. Only superior players take more bad beats than they dish out. When I’m on a run where I’ve been the one administering the suckouts, I have to take a step back and assess what I’m doing wrong to get myself into those situations. You can’t evaluate your game based on wins and losses. You have to evaluate it based on how you’re playing. And if you’re being victimized by one bad beat or another, yes, it’s frustrating, but it’s also a sign that you’re making a lot of correct decisions.

Speaking of decisions, here’s one that may or may not have been correct—judge for yourself. In a heads-up sit-n-go, with blinds at $15/$30 and about $1,000 in my stack and $2,000 in my opponent’s, I was dealt two black aces in the big blind. My opponent limped. Not wanting to lose him, but also wanting to build a little bit of a pot, I did something I rarely do: I min-raised. It kind of telegraphed the strength of my hand, but what the heck, there’s nothing wrong with playing that way on occasion, as long as you mix it up and don’t do the exact same thing with aces the next time. He called the extra $30, and we were off to the flop.

The flop came Q-7-3, all clubs. With the ace of clubs in my hand, I figured I probably had the best hand at that moment, and if I had been miraculously outflopped, I definitely had outs. I bet $60 into a $120 pot, and my opponent called. The turn was an offsuit jack. Same situation—I could be up against two pair, but most likely I had the best hand, and I certainly still had a nut draw. This time, I checked, hoping to look weak and draw a bet out of my opponent. He bit (or so I thought) and bet half the pot, $120. I came over the top, raising to $450. He put me all in for just a few hundred more, and I made the automatic call. He tabled the 9c-2c, I didn’t hit my club on the river, and that was that, game over.

This wasn’t a bad beat, mind you, and I’m not complaining. From the flop on, he had the best hand. But I’m curious for feedback: Could I have gotten away from the hand at any point? Obviously, a bigger pre-flop raise would have been advisable in hindsight. And if I’d just check-called all the way, I could have kept the pot small and held onto some chips. But all in all, I think it was one of those hands where I was almost destined to go broke. Opinions, however, are welcome. You can post a comment below and let me know what you think …

And keep those bad beat stories to yourselves!