7 Top Tips For Dealing With Bad Beats In Poker
Losses are unavoidable in poker, regardless of skill level.
Whether you play cash games or tournaments, you will encounter terrible losses in your poker career. Therefore, you must train yourself to be prepared for a large loss at any time.
The worst aspect is that many losses arise from outstanding plays. Although this may seem irrational, it is absolutely true.
Since luck plays a significant role in every hand of poker, you will occasionally lose flawlessly played hands, whether you are the victim of a bad beat or a cooler.
In order to best prepare you for such scenarios, we will discuss what bad beats are, how they vary from coolers, and what tactics you can employ to guarantee you are handling them effectively.
In poker, what is a bad beat?
A bad beat occurs when you lose a hand while being a heavy favorite.
In each poker hand, a favorite and an underdog exist.
If you watch poker on television, you will notice that the majority of broadcasts display the odds of each player winning the hand before, during, and after the flop, flop, and turn. The percentages fluctuate often.
Even though this is an example of a bad beat, losing an all-in bet before the flip with pocket aces versus T9 suited is hardly the worst thing that can happen to you when playing poker.
Many times in my career, I have been on the receiving end of a “one-outer,” which means that my opponent needed to spike just one card to win — and they did.
If the chances were less than 80% in your favor, you shouldn’t be bothered by any loss.
In the end, a 30 percent hand will win pretty frequently, and you must get this if you intend to play poker at all.
You will not fare very well at the tables if you are easily tilted by losing any hand in which you are a favorite because “bad beats” are something that occurs all the time.
How prevalent are bad beats?
You may be wondering how frequently you may suffer a bad beat. Unfortunately, I cannot provide a single response to your question.
Initially, there will undoubtedly be nights in which you inflict numerous bad beats on others and run very well without any concern about bad beats.
There may be nights, though, when your luck will entirely change, and you will suffer one bad beat after another, which can be quite irritating.
More than anything else, the chance of bad beats will depend on the sort of game you are playing.
Games with shallow stacks, like SNG tournaments, are a formula for bad beats, but deeper games, such as live cash games tend to have less.
Nevertheless, a bad beat in a really deep live cash game might cost you far more than a routine loss with pocket cards for a 10 large blind shove in a tournament, so everything is relative.
Regardless of the game genre you pick, you must be extremely psychologically prepared for bad beats before you begin playing at a high level.
What Are Poker Coolers?
The term “cooler” or “cold deck” is commonly used by poker players to refer to a circumstance that can be exceedingly aggravating.
You have a cooler when you have a monster hand, but your opponent has a monster hand as well, causing you to lose a monster pot.
In poker, one of the most common examples of a cooler is being dealt pocket kings and going all-in against pocket aces before the flip.
In this situation, there is almost little hope of escaping your hand, and learning that your opponent has AA is disastrous.
Other post-flop examples include making a nut flush only to lose to a straight flush or a full house and losing to a better full house.
In theory, coolers and bad beats are quite similar, with the exception that players must often bet with cooler cards, but bad beats are frequently the result of money drastically misplaying their hand.
In either case, coolers and bad beats are extremely tough to manage; therefore, let’s discuss some strategies for doing so.
Which Poker Hands Are Superior in Texas Hold’em?
As previously stated, there is no way to avoid bad beats and coolers in poker. Regardless of how brilliantly you play, they will occasionally come your way.
When you encounter a bad beat or a cooler, it is essential to continue playing solid poker, which is not always easy.
Some of the greatest losses I have witnessed at poker tables have stemmed from people losing their minds after a catastrophic bad beat and beginning to play like lunatics.
If you want to have any chance of winning in poker, you must learn how to deal with these unavoidable scenarios.
1. Take A Break
After a bad beat, the simplest approach to restore your calm and return to your A-game is to take a brief break from the game.
If you’re playing in a live situation, you can take this break by leaving the table, entering the lounge, and taking some time to contemplate your loss.
Bad beats are not an issue in the long run, but they may cause you to play poorly in the near term. A little break from the game might help you forget the hand you just lost and let you play effectively once again.
Online tournament sessions make it more difficult to take a break because you cannot sit out without being penalized, but it may be worth it if you return to playing your best poker.
Still, you may want to take a longer break if a string of bad beats leaves you psychologically tired. Taking a few days off from the game and indulging in other hobbies might be highly beneficial.
Regardless of what you do, you should always keep in mind that bad beats are an inevitable aspect of the game, especially if your opponents are playing poorly.
2. Conduct A Study Meeting
After suffering a bad beat or many bad beats during a session, I enjoy coming into the lab and analyzing the hands I lost.
During such an examination, you may discover errors in your hand that contributed to the bad beat, or you may determine that you played the hand flawlessly.
You will either enhance your game for the future or conclude that there was nothing you could have done to avoid the bad beat.
Once you know for certain how the hand played out and that you did nothing wrong, you will feel better about yourself and be more equipped to return to the battlefield.
3. Maintain a healthy financial position
Bad beats hurt regardless of the circumstances, but they hurt much more if you are playing above your means.
Depending on the style of game you want to play, you will encounter varying degrees of variance, which will also dictate the size of the bankroll you should have available.
If you are playing a game with a high degree of volatility, you should have a large bankroll relative to the buy-in to avoid being overly concerned about individual bad beats and coolers.
No of the sort of game, you should never play poker with a little number of buyins since this is a prescription for catastrophe.
You need to ensure that bad beats won’t end your game or perhaps your career; therefore, you’ll want to have a large number of buyins backing up your wager.
The larger your bankroll, the simpler it will be to endure bad beats and the less tilt you will have.
4. Concentrate on What Is Important
Before entering a casino or using a poker application, you should psychologically prepare for bad beats and coolers.
You must enter poker sessions with the understanding that bad beats can and will occur and that they are ultimately inconsequential.
Your only attention should be on playing skillfully, setting yourself in advantageous positions where you are the favorite to win chips, and avoiding costly errors.
While it is impossible to play flawlessly, playing better than your opponents will result in large long-term gains, and no amount of bad luck will reverse that.
If you are preoccupied with your bad beat, you may find yourself chasing losses or, out of anger, attempting to inflict a similar bad beat on your opponents.
This is a foolish blunder that will cause you to lose even more chips, as there is no way to manage luck or induce bad beats on purpose.
5. Play Your Hand
Poker is all about playing each and every hand to the best of your ability. After a bad beat, you will be handed a fresh poker hand, which you must then play.
Instead of dwelling on the recent loss, you must clear your thoughts and begin thinking from fresh.
Observe your cards, the amount of your stack in relation to the blinds, and the activity unfolding in front of you. Consider the preflop charts and positional play to determine the optimal way to play this hand.
The previous hand is concluded, and you cannot win back the chips you lost.
You can instead win additional chips and continue winning as usual.
6. Don’t Slander The Player
At poker tables, it is extremely normal for a player to become upset with one of their opponents and view them as the villain of the evening.
When this is the case, the player will frequently reraise against the villain and play poor poker against them in general.
This is not the proper technique to win in poker.
Regardless of how your opponent beats you, you must play your best game against them and the rest of the table.
Being hyper-focused on a single adversary may cause you to conflict with others who will strongly abuse your personal vengeance, and the villain may even wind up with a physical hand on your soul.
Always return to the fundamentals of poker and attempt to genuinely establish everyone’s range based on their actions, as opposed to arbitrarily trying to outplay a single player.
7. Be Willing To Surrender
There will be some bad beats on the flop and turn, but you will be a huge favor when you put your chips in the money. In this situation, there is no genuine way to save money.
On the other hand, there are bad beats that occur when you don’t get all your money in before the beat, and you are now requested to pay off a hefty bet on the river by an opponent who is not likely bluffing.
Consider a situation in which you make a large overbet with pocket kings on a Q-high board with two clubs on the turn. Your opponent calls and the ace of clubs appears on the river. Now, your opponent is all-in!
You can choose to make a call out of spite, although knowing that your opponent has the flush or another hand that has you beat.
This is never a sound strategy, and you should always be prepared to fold, even when your opponent has made a difficult call on the flop or turn and caught the miraculous card.
Thinking tactically and saving money in situations such as these can be significant in the long term, as you will save a ton of money by ignoring your emotions and making the proper moves.
