How To Read Hands At No-Limit Hold'em (Book Review)

book Cover: How To Read Hands At No-Limit Hold'em

I recently finished reading How To Read Hands At No-Limit Hold'em by Ed Miller. Some of you who read my other poker book reviews know that I pay attention to whether a particular book stands out in the sea of printed material that accompanied poker’s explosion in popularity over the last decade. Ed Miller did not disappoint. The author smartly carved out a single, though pretty advanced topic, which received relatively little in-depth coverage in most poker strategy books. Then covered that topic in detail, including examples and homework assignments after each chapter. Most of us poker players being slackers at heart - have got to hate homework. I appreciated the book’s singular focus  on reading hand ranges. The ideas are explained in plain  English resulting in greater clarity.

Audience

Hand Reading is not a poker beginner book by any stretch. This is an advanced poker concept requiring discipline and lots of practice to perfect. In fact the book makes this point beyond any doubt by stating that range assignment and tracking takes a lot of mental work. However, multiple level thinking  and thinking in terms of hand ranges are really at the core of what separates professional poker players from amateurs. As such the reward for mastering hand reading is a substantial increase in your win rate.
 

The Grade

This is a good, well-written poker book which is well worth your time. It is a practical book which touches on theory only as much as necessary to explain concepts. Moreover the book has a section specifically for the purpose of quick refresh after the initial read. Author also introduced some computer software tools to assist in doing some of the tedious poker analysis work. I loved those practical gems, which together make any book so much more useful for a reader. The only points I take from a perfect score are for the price.

The book is priced at ~$50. I happen to be very suspicious of any poker book priced above value range of $15-20. That because premium priced range is where one finds scammy books which promise to “reveal ultimate secrets to unlock unlimited earnings potential in blank”. Here substitute word poker for blank. One the other hand, given that target audience is rather limited, pricing it at a premium might have been the only way to make the whole enterprise economically feasible. But I am unconvinced.
 

High Points

Again I must commend the author on smartly choosing the topic of his book. A method of Hand reading in poker based on assigning hand ranges and tracking them as hand progresses is covered thoroughly, clearly and in good detail. At the same time the focus is kept on practical poker by copious examples throughout the text. Starting with simple cases, then analysing more difficult cases where opponents could be bluffing. The material in the book is logically organized and easy to follow.

As a starting point for hand ranges the author introduces a simple classification for player types you meet at the table. The categories like nit, fish and regular seemed to be geared more toward live poker. That makes sense given that E. Miller is a live poker professional.

I liked simple, down to earth message - Hand reading is a lot of work. Yet it is worth the effort. The author chose not to sugarcoat the fact that accurate, real-time hand reading is quite challenging. Mentally taxing, in fact.

There are several useful features of this book which will make consuming the text easier for readers. First, paragraphs summarizing some concept or fact are highlighted in a tip box of sorts, making it easier to skim through. Second, the tail of the book contains quick concepts. That is not unlike earlier books Ed Miller wrote with David Sklanky. For example Small Stakes Hold’em. These quick concepts are very useful in itself but specifically shine when one returns for a quick refresh. Third, all examples are illustrated with four color deck. Though I always thought of four color deck as a gimmick, it worked surprisingly well here. I refer specially to an electronic copy. Finally, I did not have to double check myself whether certain card is a spade or club.
 

Needs Improvement

Besides book’s price I mentioned earlier I did not find any issues. The one  below is truly a possible improvement rather than being a flaw:

Each chapter in the book ends with a bunch of exercises for the reader. The exercises are designed to help absorb the material by going through the process of narrowing opponent’s hand range. Somewhere toward the end of the book we get introduced to a commercial software tool, Flopzilla, which automates some of the work in exploring hand ranges. I thought that it would be more useful to refer to a website which guides readers through doing book’s homework exercises. Perhaps drawing on results from Flopzilla.

Bottom Line

In conclusion, buy How To Read Hands At No-Limit Hold'em if you are playing poker on a regular basis. You are moving up in stakes and have plenty of time to study the material in the book. Systematically applying what the book teaches can help you find profitable bluffing, bluff catching and calling opportunities. Importantly, those bluffs would be based on a method rather than blind aggression.

Review: Inside Underground Poker

Inside Underground Poker

I recently watched a video named Inside Underground Poker. Here is a youtube link. It is a documentary about people who run illegal, “high-stakes” poker games in New York City. This video left me with a few questions. So, in this post, I am going to pose my questions. I want to know if I am just out of line, maybe I missed the point of that video. Or perhaps you would agree that the point eludes us. Warning: contains some spoilers.

The video is presented as “tell all” life of high-stakes poker players. Members of this exclusive club go by nicknames like “Banker”, “Breeze” and the like. Then they show people playing $5-$10 No Limit Holdem. There are scenes of players loudly lamenting loss of couple of grands. First off in the movie Rounders main character (played by Matt Damon) sits down to play with 15 grands. Also note, that movie was shot in 1998 when dollar was worth much more than it is today. I mention Rounders because it is what this documentary is clearly inspired by. We will return to that movie later. That high-stakes thing puzzled me. Can  $5-$10 be considered a high-stakes game? If every casino in US routinely offers these very same or higher stakes. Actually, even many home games are not too far behind. In Northern California, where I live, home games among working adults often run at between $1-$2 and $2-$5 stakes. Home poker among students  usually runs at lower stakes for obvious reasons. I thought that high-stakes is what one cannot find in a casino. A related question is - should any unemployed person playing poker be considered a poker professional? 

Security

Mike, the owner of this makeshift poker club, is obsessed with security. They change locations all around  greater New York. We see shots of dark, shady, rundown places in Brooklyn and the like strongly evoking some of Rounders photography.  At some point high-rollers in the documentary complain to Mike that his new place just smells bad.

Don’t get me wrong, security is a legitimate concern. There is no question that men behave irrationally around money. Especially if you add alcohol and women into the mix. The silliness of it all came into focus once I remembered that the whole brouhaha is happening  2.5 hour drive away from Atlantic City! Town where these high-rollers could find bigger stakes, safer games and clean places that don’t stink. Hell, they can even catch a train back home for $39 in case poker luck was not on their side.
 
Just Another Home Game

The documentary is filled with tension of doing something illegal. At some point narrator asks Mike if he is afraid to go to jail. For the record, Mike is not afraid. Take that, NYPD! However why all the precautions and strong aura of illegal? Mike’s poker club does not even have a business model. There is no rake, cover charge or other formal means to charge players. We are told that players tip the owner if they liked particular night. I am not a legal expert. Though it sounds exactly like any other home poker game, which is to the best of my knowledge is still legit.
 
Drama

Then there is drama. Director’s high point of this documentary comes when they show one player who is deeply indebted to Mike, the owner. Mike continues to fund that player (“front” him in the poker parlance) but insists on him going into other “home” games to lure in new clients. I was perking up in my chair hoping to see some tough collection tactics, something akin to great scenes from Rounders. But everything is amicable and the player is content with being a prop player or rather Mike’s shill. I guess that is because he is a proposition player. Nothing wrong with prop players, every casino employs them. But if so, where is the drama?

Overall, I was left hanging with all my questions. Is this documentary just much ado about nothing? Like so much of reality TV, which floods our screens daily. Why does director seem working so hard to make us believe this is something other than a homely poker game? Why do grown-ups with decent access to legitimate gambling facilities continue to entertain what I can only call Rounders reality?  I am a huge fan of movie Rounders myself. I admit some scenes in the movie are just intoxicating but still, why? Finally, reality is supposed to trump fiction any time. Why is Inside Underground Poker appears as caricature of movie Rounders?

5 Tips for Self Marketing for Poker Sponsorship

Guest post by Stevie Clapton

Most that take their Poker playing very seriously one day aspire to be offered a sponsorship. Players that receive sponsorships are actually paid to play poker, and are not required to rely upon their earnings in order to continue playing at a high level. Unfortunately, what most do not realize is that good play alone will not get you a sponsorship. You have to effectively market yourself to the sponsors and prove to them that an investment in you will provide them enough visibility to give them a positive return. No sponsor is going to continue to sponsor a player when it is not profitable for them or their business. This is usually why you see the "personalities" within the poker scene receiving the most lucrative sponsorships. They may not always be the "best" players in the world, but they draw viewers to the sport, which is in the favor of those that hold events, and therefore in the favor of the company that is providing the sponsorship. They will certainly forego the better player for a player that will give them a better return on their investment.

Increase Your Skill

Having a personality might help, but there is nothing better for your chances at receiving a sponsorship than just being downright good at the game. Make sure that you are constantly studying, and playing the game enough in your spare time to where playing well just becomes second nature. You know what you need to do with each and every hand. Try to keep a daily practice schedule to the best of your ability.

Participate In the Community

Participate in the community wherever you can. Go to events. Go to conventions. Try to play in private games with other experienced or semiprofessional players. Take part in all of the major forums and discussion boards about the game. Do anything and everything that you possibly can to get your name out there, and recognized by as many people within the industry as you possibly can.

Join Tournaments with Visibility

Is there an upcoming tournament that is going to be receiving coverage from a number of prominent media sources? These provide you with a perfect opportunity to begin making a name for yourself and marketing yourself for the purpose of securing a sponsorship. Get some wins under your belt. Get your name mentioned in a few newspapers, magazines, and websites. Look at it as building a career portfolio, and it is the only thing that most companies are going to have to judge you on.

Meet Those in Positions to Make It Happen

Did you hear about a new company that is looking to sponsor a player at around your skill level? Is there someone in the industry who might be able to connect you to potential sponsorship opportunities? Remember, no one is going to give you a sponsorship just because they like you, but it certainly does help to know people in positions that can help you to achieve sponsorship. Sometimes, the companies know nothing more than that poker provides them an opportunity to profit, and choose their sponsorships with a consultant in the industry.

Become an Expert

Do you feel like you know everything there is to know about poker? Using your knowledge of the game to promote yourself as a player can be an excellent way to attract attention to your career. Start a website and offer hints or industry incite. Publish a free downloadable eBook, that details the basics of becoming a
solid poker player. Write guest blogs for prominent poker blogs, and link to your own profiles or website as a way to build a following. Receiving a sponsorship can be difficult. It requires a personality that draws viewers, results that keep your relevant, and a marketing plan to get your noticed. But with a little due diligence, you can quickly become recognized as a top up and coming poker player, worthy of his first sponsorship.

Author Bio: Stevie Clapton is a part of BingoSites.com who provide poker articles and reviews.

What Are the Odds

Photo by Richard Paterson

I have made extensive use of poker stats and odds in my post Unconventional Moves In Poker. Few people were interested to know where I get the numbers I used in that post. ln general, there are three ways to obtain poker stats and probabilities. What follows is super short review of each. Possible sources are:

1. Online odds calculators
2. From a published source (books or tables)
3. Doing the math yourself

Online Odds Calculators

Easy to start with. That is once you find a good one. Poker Odds calculators proliferate on the Internet, so, these days, pretty much every site has one.  Odds calculators use partial simulations and excel in answering questions like if hand A is pitted against hand B what are the odds of A winning assuming both hands are allin and play to the river.

Once you moved beyond those simple questions, Calculator’s UI and capabilities vary a lot. Tinkering with screen settings can be confusing and/or frustrating. Expect to spend a few hours before you can fully tame such a Calculator.

Another issue is confidence in Calculator results. Since these calculators use partial simulations, the results are just good approximations of actual probabilities. Another issue is minor bugs in software. For example, let say you are trying to figure when holding 7♦8♦ what is a chance of making a flush by the river. Typically, Calculators would produce an odds number which includes cases where board comes up ♣♣♣♣♣ (all clubs). Because that case is also “making” flush by the river. Those bugs are rarely a big issue in practice. Unless you want high confidence, like for publishing numbers somewhere.

Published Sources

Very easy to use and results are trustworthy. On the flip side, answers are limited to most common situations in Texas Holdem Poker. Such books might be of little help in analyzing poker situations that are off the beaten path.

Specifically, I use Texas Hold’em Poker Odds for Your Strategy by Catalin Barboianu.  This is not your run-of-the-mill poker strategy book. I would not even call it a book about Texas Holdem poker in sense. Rather the author, a schooled mathematician, uses game of Holdem poker as setup producing a host of interesting probability problems. The book is hardly for reading as it is just filled with tables and formulas. But as  a reference on poker stats and probabilities  the book is nearly perfect. It is highly useful for a quick lookup of specific number or situation.  I also have confidence in numbers published  based on author’s credentials and generally because published material goes through more scrutiny.

DIY

Doing it yourself  is labor intensive and obviously is only for those so inclined. Though basic math itself is pretty simple, once you get the hang of it. This is somewhat akin to difference between ordering fish fillet in a restaurant vs going on a fishing trip, then grilling your fish over open fire under the stars. Which fish, do you think tastes better? It is the same with poker odds. Once you go through the exercise, you have made results your own. One positive side-effect of doing it the hard way is result memorization is almost automatic.

Have your favorite Odds Calculator? - tell me about it in the comment section below.

Unconventional Moves In Poker

Think Outside the box by ArtJonak

Every poker player loves getting suited connectors and for good reasons. They make strong hands like straights and flushes. Most of all, they are fun to play for its draws. A standard way of playing suited connectors is to call, trying to see a cheap flop, then go from there depending how well your cards connected with the board. On the other side, any good poker coach will caution you that against a raise preflop suited connectors are not playable. Most of the better poker books contain the same advice - avoid playing suited connectors in early position or against raisers. This has become an ingrained wisdom, which all but the loosest players follow without giving it a second thought. Of course loose, super-aggressive players will play and raise connectors from any position. Not for any specific reason, it is just any cards with some promise are an excuse to see a flop. This article shows that in very specific situation calling a re-raise with suited connectors is mathematically correct poker move. Moreover, in tournaments, it is a necessary move.

Calling A Re-Raise with Suited Connectors

That is right - we need to see a re-raise. Just a raise in front is not enough. First, let me describe all the preconditions for this move. As a side note, you cannot overdo this play because this exact situation does not occur very often.

1. You are on the button or one off the button with a medium to low suited connections. No exceptions - you need position.
2. There is a raise from early position followed by a re-raise. You have at least two opponents. This is important because the goal is not just to win a pot. It is to triple up your stack.
3. You are relatively deep-stacked and can call for less than 15% of your stack.

For you to triple up, your opponents have to really like their hands and be willing to go all in with them. That is the reason why I like to see a re-raise before action is on me. That tells me we are going to play a big pot. The call from the original raiser is expected because with my call his pot odds will be pretty good.

Provided we got a desired situation, first we consider probability of making a hand on the flop. Not just any made hand, but a strong hand like two pair or better. So we continue in the hand as a big favorite to win. It is worth mentioning for PLO fans out there, these odds apply only to No Limit Holdem. Here is what exact probabilities are:

• Flopping  two pair  - 4.55%
• Flopping 3 of a kind while holding unpaired cards - 1.44%
• Flopping a straight (assumed your connectors can form 4 straights) - 1.3%
• Flopping a flush - 0.8%
• Full house and higher “miracle” combinations together ~ 0.1%

All together we will have a strong made hand only 8.2% of time. These are odds of 11 to 1 against. You can see now why suited connectors are called a speculative hand. Yet it is a good deal! Because we are playing with two or more other players, our upside is at least 2X of our stack. For example, say you called for 10% of your stack. If you do not hit any of the hands above, you can fold without losing any more chips. In doing so you are giving yourself odds of 19:1, but your winning chances are much better. They are 11:1 as shown above, making this a correct play.

Rationale

Just because a certain play is profitable in terms of odds does not mean you have to play that way. In fact, for cash games I would not recommend going unconventional at all. In a cash game you have time to wait for better situations or find a more profitable game. Poker tournaments are a different story. In a tournament, due to shortage of time, speculative, expensive and risky moves like this become necessary. Even being the best player at the table you may not get time to let your skills work before ever growing blinds consume your stack. Just playing your cards will not win tournaments for you. I am not talking about once in a lifetime event when stars align and you get all the right cards. Hot streaks aside, there are not enough good cards in a deck to provide you with low-risk starting hands in which you are an overwhelming favorite. That’s unadorned truth about tournament poker. To succeed in poker tournaments, you must take risks, big risks. Moves like this where you triple your stack can sometime alone propel you into the money. The skill is in finding opportunities where upside more than compensates for the risk. The move with suited connectors certainly qualifies.  It is profitable on its own and provides a great bang for the buck. Its power coming from a chance to triple up. As I mentioned earlier this situation does not arise too often. A typical player could save perhaps something like one tournament a year. Is it worth it? - It is for me.

When Things Do Not Go As Planned

What happens when you do not flop a strong hand? That, by the way, will happen 91.8% of the time. Clearly if you flopped nothing, you are done with the hand. Note that even if you fold everything but the made hands this move is still profitable under strict conditions describe above. But that’s not all! - You have 20% chance of flopping a strong draw. Let’s look at more interesting cases where you flop a draw and need to decide how and whether to continue in the hand. Before going any further I must mention, you are entering dangerous territory. The pot is big. You should mentally prepare to get all your chips in the middle if you decide to play. This hand just might be your last in this tournament.

I will share some tips how to navigate such situation. However, the truth is you are on your own. There are just too many different situations to analyze. I personally would continue playing only if I have a flush draw or straight draw with top pair and upper end of the straight. Something like QJ on board of 9TQ. Plus there are no possibilities of full house. The good news is you have almost 11% chance of hitting a flush draw on the flop. Almost the same chance of hitting a straight draw. So ~20% time you might consider staying in the hand.

You may have wondered why I insisted on having the button. Playing draws is where having position is crucial. Position gives you options to still win this big pot even though your hand, while has potential, is third best at the moment. If you are facing tight players and flop betting is not too strong, then you may choose to go all in with strong draws.  Against loose, aggressive players you may take a free card. Then, if your flush comes in on the turn, let them represent it and go into calling mode. When there is an obvious flush draw on the board most players tend to play straightforwardly. This is a spot where watching your opponents’ bet sizing can give you reliable clues. Expect a smaller bet if opponent(s) is drawing. A larger bet, something like ⅔ of the pot or more, tells you they are afraid that you have a flush draw.

On rare occasions this move can backfire. You might make your flush and run into higher flush or have your set beaten by top set. These are just bad beats. Do not slip into result oriented mindset. Though sad, occasional bad beats should not be a reason to question your game. They are random accidents. You shrug them off and go on to play next session of poker. The most frustrating one for me in context of unconventional move with suited connectors is when original raiser just happens to hold Aces. They may elect to go all in preflop forcing you to fold. Thus wasting your chips on expensive call.

Conclusion

Making moves in poker, especially in tournament poker where survival itself is valuable, requires  some mental fortitude and clear thinking. You have to identify the right moments for moves, then have conviction to pull the trigger. The best way to acquire such unwavering conviction is to have a clear understanding why you are making moves and what outcomes will follow. Hopefully, this article helps understanding how to make a move with suited connectors. Also why such moves should become a staple of your poker toolbox.

Review: Insurance For Poker

Piggy bank insurance

I recently stumbled on a fascinating poker bankroll management product. In a nutshell InsuredPlay.com is a service that insures players against losing pots as they play poker online.  In the wake of poker black Friday, I expected some sort of poker insurance product to emerge. Filling a gaping hole of confidence in the online poker system after FullTiltPoker demise. Though I was thinking it would be a fraud or insolvency insurance. Something like FDIC insurance in US. Well, there was a need - capitalism went to work and did not disappoint. Introducing InsuredPlay.com. As you can feel, I am pretty excited, so before I dive into details of how it works, I must mention that I have no relationship whatsoever with the product or the company behind it.

No More Bad Beats?

Bad beats are part and parcel of every kind of poker , being especially “bad” in No Limit Holdem poker. So eliminating poker bad beats takes us into uncharted territory here. But that is what this insurance amounts to. Essentially InsuredPlay offers, for a fee, to take chance out of winning or losing a pot.

The insurance premium is money in the pot minus your Expected Value (EV) or your pot equity. That is what you pay to get a particular hand insured. On top of the premium you pay a fee, which is tiered, and, roughly speaking, amounts to 1% of the pot. The fee progressively decreases based on how much you use InsuredPlay.  You must be allin or call an allin bet before the river for insurance to kick in. I am not entirely sure why only allin hands can be insured. My guess is allin provides a discernable point in the hand to lock in insurance premium calculation.

For example, suppose you hold KK and go allin vs AQ. Your pot equity is 80% on the flop. You lose the hand with an Ace coming on the river. It costs you 20% + 1% of the pot to get insurance. Now insurance pays you 100% of the pot to compensate your loss.
It is easy to see that this kind of insurance essentially eliminates variance. Since only a small fraction of all you hands played are ever allin, InsuredPlay, technically, reduces your overall variance rather than eliminating it completely.

Let’s take a step back to consider what this product does and how it may be useful. First off, eliminating variance or risk is exactly what any insurance product is suppose to do. An insurance works by pooling resources to spread risk over statistically large customer population. Since variance, as we know it, only exists in small samples. Variance simply converges to its expected value if you observe it over statistically large population. That is just a long way of saying that InsuredPlay’s model is pretty simple and straightforward to understand. It can be summarized as follows: Your long term win rate remains the same minus fees. You win the same amount (minus fees) as you would without the insurance. However insurance takes away some of the volatility, providing for consistency in your winnings over time.

Insurance and Poker Bankroll Management

Who would benefit from a product like poker insurance? Remember that you pay between 0.25% - 1.5% in a form of fees. Those come straight out of your win rate. While it is easy to dismiss this as another “rake”, I do not think it is a right comparison. Because, in the case of insurance, you voluntarily buy something to fortify your poker bankroll.

I think that a product like this can be of interest if you:

1. Play a lot of online poker
2. Are already a solid winner
3. Depend on poker winnings for your income. In other words bankroll management is something you take seriously (as any poker player should).

If all of the above is true, than you might be interested in making you income steadier. And you do not mind paying to assure that paycheck comes regularly. In other words bullet-proof your poker bankroll against those nasty downswings.

The whole idea of insurance can be taken a step further. Imagine playing poker heads up. You and the other player are both insured. In theory, since insurance takes away a big part of chance in the game, your poker skills like hand reading and figuring hand ranges becomes even more important. In fact you can think of such match as a pure poker skill match. A game where the best players wins, always. Again, this is a very theoretical situation, but the possibilities are very interesting.

 

Great Idea With Caveats

I would love to try InsuredPlay out, but, since I am located in US, I cannot play online poker. That said, I think this is one of the most innovative product ideas in poker in a long time.  Though I would certainly try, I would not use InsuredPlay on a regular basis. That is besides the fact, that I do not play poker professionally. The reason can be expressed in two words - financial stability. Financial services and startups just do not mix well. This is a startup operating out of Curacao (tax haven Caribbean island). While an argument can be made that any company is a startup at some point. Take paypal as an example of successful financial services startup 12 years ago. But there are some key differences: paypal was an on-shore company, funded to the hilt by top tier venture capitalists and with connections to many premier US financial companies.
Even the fact that InsuredPlay has an eGaming license in Curacao is not enough. First, it is not clear why it needs a gaming license. After all, it provides a financial service, and as such is not a gambling operator. Speaking of licenses, I would have been a lot more comfortable if InsuredPlay had an on-shore banking license. To continue along this line, I think most consumers look for financial service companies to buttress their finances. But in this situation stability is not in the cards.

Poker Bad Beats - Handle It!

Bad beat by B. Charles Johnson

Bad beats - everyone, who plays poker regularly, have experienced them. Typically you have the best hand on the flop. You bet and raise trying to build the pot. Perhaps you are already counting what would be your chip lead after you have won this big pot. All this daydreaming ends up in a rude awakening after your opponent catches a miracle card giving her a winning poker hand. Getting a bad beat feels lousy. After all Lady Luck just given you a ringing slap on the face. Those are the moments when you question whether poker is a good way to spend your time and money. However, as a famous philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said:

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

While we can never remove bad beats from poker experience. What we can do is seeing how they fit into structure of this beautiful game we call poker. Seeing a larger picture may (hopefully) help us find solace whenever bad beat occur to us.

Bad Beats Are Real Or Not

Of course bad beats are real.  Experiencing a bad beat hurts in a very real sense. I have never seen a poker player, no matter how experienced and successful, who could just cheerfully shrug off a bad beat moment. Capable of continuing to play their A-game completely undisturbed. It is never that simple.

This hand happened to me at the end of last season. The tournament was in its late stages when I saw a flop of 2♠9♣7♦ while holding a pair of Jacks. After calling my pre-flop raise out of big blind, my opponent suddenly went all in. Both of us being relatively short-stacked and he has me covered just barely. I called. He flips over his hole cards, showing 9♠6♠. I am in great shape with my overpair of JJ...Alas, the turn card is 9 and I am out of the tournament. This is a very real bad beat. Though it is not the worst I have seen (see later for that).

What I meant by saying bad beats are not real is this: We all have intuitive understanding that bad beat are supposed to be rare occurrences. So whenever they do occur, it feels “unfair”. But that is just a trick our mind is playing on us. Our mind expects a pattern where there is none. We cannot reasonably expect bad beats, or other low probability events for that matter, to occur widely separated by strings of favorable outcomes. This is random nature of poker or poker variance. What probability theory tells us is only that low probability events will occur statistically less than high probability events. Each individual bad beat is completely random. Moreover bad beats are “free” to congregate and hit you five times this Saturday instead of being well behaved and hitting you five times over the course of a year. Again the unreal part is having any expectation of when bad beat is due or not.

Winning In Poker vs Result Oriented Mindset

A unique and difficult part of mastering poker is understanding that results, that is winning or losing a pot, are not determined just by how skillfully you played. In fact, you can quickly reach a dead end if you insist on finding fault with your play every time you lose a pot. Poker is not chaos either, skills in poker matter great deal. Perhaps this unique blend of skill and chance is what attracts people to poker in the first place.

A practical takeaway from all this is you should not re-examine your plays in light of winning or loosing a specific poker hand. The only piece of information you should get from seeing a showdown is whether the actual hand shown was in hand range that you considered. Avoid falling into result oriented mindset where all plays are justified by results. This is NOT the way to play winning poker. Poker is a one-way street. You make your plays, then cards are revealed. Afterwards you cannot go back and revise your plays. So, do not.  Instead just focus on executing the best plays in each situation. Let’s see if there are any tips on handling poker bad beats better.

 

Handling Bad Beats

There is no silver bullet, which takes the sting of losing away. However there are practical mental tips, which can help in preventing tilt when bad beats occur as they inevitably will:

1. Understanding math behind poker. Most poker players know drawing odds of various card combinations. Another piece of data are preflop matchup odds between different kinds of starting hands. You should memorize the most common odds. In fact, without knowing those odds you would not be able to tell a bad beat when you see one. Having a firm grip on statistical basics of poker can also help in avoiding logical pitfalls. More on that later.
2. Take a break after a bad beat. This is tried and true, low-tech method, always at your disposal. Your mental balance is very important. Avoid giving advantage to your opponents by playing while on tilt.
3. Watch out for favorable cards. These are the opposite of bad beats. If you appreciate miracle cards as much as you should, then you mood will be serene. Do not take those great cards for granted. Enjoy them as much as you suffer from bad cards. Noticing variance from both sides can bring balance to your game.

Donts of Handling Bad Beats

Here are a couple of points or rather traps to fall into when dealing with poker bad beats.

1. Do not take it personally. Have you ever visited 2+2 or other poker forums? They are full of people who take a bad beat as a proof that game is rigged. They go on a conspiracy theory trip, then seek confirmation from fellow poker players. I witnessed this many times online. People see a string of great cards getting beat by improbably combinations. They immediately assume that to be impossible and therefore game must be rigged. That is the logical pitfall I mentioned earlier.
2. Never confuse a loss from poor play with a bad beat. Every poker book has examples illustrating this point. Here's one, I observed recently: Player A raises preflop and player B, a loose aggressive player, calls. Flop comes something like K♠8♦6♠. Player A, the preflop raiser, bets 60% of pot and gets called. Turn is a blank. Player A bets 40% of pot and gets called. River is T♠. Player A checks and calls B’s bet. Player A shows AA, Player B wins with Q♠5♠ by making a flush. Player A loudly declares that player B played stupid. Yet player A too made a mistake. By not going all in on the turn he allowed A decent odds to draw to (and complete his flush). This is a textbook example of poor play rather than a bad beat.

In conclusion, here is my favorite bad beat of all times. I was on the losing end of it, thankfully it was just free online poker. I called a raise with KK against a single player preflop. The flop came 72K, all different suites. I thought to myself that my opponent is dead. That I have the nuts and now it is just a question of how to win the most in this situation. After all, I have top set with no flush possibilities and board cards spread wide apart. Imagine my surprise when turn and river came T9 completing a runner-runner straight for QJ held by my opponent. I did not see it coming.