Bad Beats Happen, Deal with It!

Bad Beats (or suckouts) are a way of life for the online poker player. They happen to everyone who has ever played online poker and they aren’t going away anytime soon! The only thing you can do is shake your head and move on.

Over the long run, you will make more money from individuals who make bad plays against you than you will lose. The long run is not measured in hands or session or even weeks, but months and years. Poker is all about making plays according to percentages; and that translate to dollars over a large sample size.

A bad beat or suckout is a lost pot when all or most of the money went in when you were a substantial favorite. So if you are always substantially ahead when the money goes in, then unfortunately you will lose some of the time, but you will win most of the time.

Now, sometimes you can bring a bad beat upon yourself. This is something you need to address because it can be a fatal flaw in your game and cost you a lot of money. Here are a two common mistakes that can lead to “bad beats”:

• Giving a free card: You give your opponent a chance to beat you by checking against a drawing hand. For example, you have Ac Ah on a 9s 7s Ad board. You have hit your set on the flop but the board has straight and flush possibilities. If you check and try to slow play, you risk giving your opponent a chance to beat you (assuming the board doesn’t pair).
• Not understanding the Odds: Lets use the hands again in the example above and fast forward to the Turn. Since we shouldn’t check, how much should we bet with one card to come? If our opponent has a flush draw he is about 20% to make his hand on the river. If you make a 1/4 pot sized bet then he is getting adequate odds from the pot by calling. You need to bet at least 1/2 pot – 3/4 pot to take away his odds.

So the next time you get sucked out on do yourself a favor. Instead of going on tilt and losing a couple of buyins, just shake your head and deal with it!

Related posts:

1. Pot Odds and Implied Odds
2. Value betting the river
3. Calculating Pot Odds Quickly and Accurately