Bad Beat Poker
As a boy, anytime the words “not fair” were uttered by me or my siblings the response from our father was an unwavering “The only fair is the State Fair and it only comes around once a year”.
BadBeat Clothing is a poker clothing & poker merch brand bringing you quality poker t-shirts, poker hoodies and more. Look great on or off the tables. A bad beat by definition is simply losing a hand of poker when you were the statistical favorite. And really what is meant here is losing as the statistical favorite when big amounts of money go in the middle. Bad Beat Jackpot. Four eights or better. Four twos or better. The player with a Bad Beat and the player with the highest-ranked hand must always hold a five-card poker hand that includes.
The player with a Bad Beat and the player with the highest-ranked hand must always hold a five-card poker hand that includes their two pocket cards. In the case of four of a kind, the player’s two (2). Player 1 has A♥A♦. Player 2 has A♣K♥. Both players are all in on a flop of 7♣J♥J♠ Player 1 is 98% favourite. Player 2 can only win if the two remaining cards are either the two remaining kings to make.
Bad Beat Poker
Well, in the poker world “unfair” seems to come around plenty.
Sort of like death and taxes being certainties, in poker you’re certain to get bad beats. Also, similar to death and taxes because there goes your money and here comes that dead inside feeling in your stomach.
In elementary terms, a bad beat is when a poker hand that’s favored to win, loses to an underdog hand that catches cards to beat it.
For example, in a no-limit hold’em game or tourney, you go all-in pre-flop with the best possible at that moment; Ace, Ace.
Imagine one player wasn’t dissuaded by your huge bet and calls, going all-in behind you. They flip over 5 & 6 of clubs. The 5 & 6 of clubs isn’t a hand to go all-in with pre-flop. Of course they justify it in their mind because after all they’re suited.
So, we’ve got your aces against 5/6 suited. You are thrilled to see their hand, and because the pot is huge thanks to their call, you’re basically reaching to the middle of the table to start raking them up and stacking. What you fail to realize, being a beginner, is that it’s not over til it’s over.
Now, while your “pocket rockets’ look like a cinch and get pulse up, unfortunately they’re only about a 77% favorite to win. That means for every 4 hands you go all-in with pocket aces against a 5/6 of the same suit, you’re going to lose once.
Don’t Define Me
The term “Bad Beat” isn’t defined by Webster. What constitutes a bad beat in poker is therefore subject to interpretation. Generally a bad beat is considered to occur when a hand that is an overwhelming favorite loses to an inferior hand that gets needed cards to win.
Say you go all-in before the flop with pocket 9s and are called by Ace and Queen of hearts.
In this scenario, you and your 9s will win 52% of the time. Even after the flop and turn are dealt, your 9s may be holding steady. Then bam, river card is a Queen and you lose.
That’s a common beat, incredibly common. It’s essentially a coin toss, so regaling your fellow poker players with the tale of your defeat will not garner any sympathy. Who am I kidding? Neither will tales of a legitimate bad beat.
Bad Beats need to be a slightly more miraculous and painful than simply losing when you’re a slight favorite to win. Going all-in with pocket 10s and losing to pocket 5s, would be a bad beat. Mostly because your 10s are an 80% favorite to win the hand.
It’s important to keep in mind, especially for your mental well-being, that even a somewhat strong hand of say, Ace/King against a Queen/Ten hand will only win about 66% of the time.
Particularly brutal bad beats come when you get all your money into the pot when you’re ahead on the flop or turn. After all, if four of the five community cards are already dealt and you’re way ahead, it’s easy to assume that one remaining river card won’t slaughter you.
Unfortunately, it can and it often does exactly that. Say you started the hand with a pocket pair, (say pocket 7’s), and end up getting three of a kind after the turn. And let’s say your opponent has a flush draw – he has two hearts in his hand, and there are two hearts on the board. With only the river card to come, your set of sevens, will win 84% of the time.
Those times when that winning flush card comes for your opponent, which it will 16% of the time, can be so incredibly disheartening.
It’ll make you want to yell obscenities and storm out of the casino. When in reality, you were just a participant in a soulless, cold, uncaring mathematical string of probabilities.
Another devastating bad beat comes when a player goes “runner runner” on you. What this means is that you are well ahead after the flop, but the resulting turn and river cards give your opponent two cards they need to snatch victory away from you.
A runner-runner bad beat would be when you flop a full house, only to see your opponent go runner runner to catch the exact two cards he needs to make a full house that is higher than your full house.
More commonly, you’ll experience a runner-runner bad beat when someone catches running cards to make an odd straight, or a flush on you.
While losing cold hard cash to a bad beat in a regular game hurts, bad beats are especially painful when you experience one during poker tournaments.
One minute you’re sitting there Ace/Ace dreaming of that final table and significant check and the next you’re sulking in the parking lot asking yourself, “What happened?”.
Does It Hurt
“The bubble” is the term for when a poker tournament is at the point where all remaining players will be paid winnings. Consequently, the “bubble boy” or the person “on the bubble” is the player who finished just one spot away from the money.
In the World Series of Poker Main Event, they usually pay a certain percentage of the finishers – typically around the remaining 10% of the player pool.
So with, say, 8,000 entrants, the last 800 remaining players get paid. The guy with the unfortunate distinction of finishing in 801st place, the bubble boy, receives nothing.
As you can imagine, suffering a bad beat to become the bubble boy is not only rare, but perhaps the cruelest bad beat of all.
I’d like to note here that the most incredible and unique bad beats have their own name, “coolers.” The definition of a cooler hand in poker, is when a rock solid hand loses to an even more amazing hand.
As an example, one cooler would be when a player with 4 of a kind, loses to a straight flush. These are the bad beats that are typical qualifying hands to win the large bad beat jackpots found in poker rooms and casinos around the country.
A rare and especially hateful, but not impossible bad beat is a combination cooler/runner-runner hand in which a player flops 4 of a kind, only to see his opponent catch runner-runner cards to achieve a higher 4 of a kind.
While this is a bad beat, the sting will be lightened as the loser would win a big chunk of cash as part of the bad beat jackpot.
What if he loses this way in a card room without a bad beat jackpot? Well, he’s got a legitimate bad beat story to tell.
Conclusion
Bad beats have been around since poker’s humble beginnings and good or bad they’ll be here to the end.
Some professional players, see Phil Hellmuth, are notorious for his pronounced reactions to bad beats.
However, enduring a bad beat means that the losing player or victim was “getting the money in good” and in most instances would win by playing the same hand the same way.
Therefore, the more stoic poker players accept bad beats as an unpleasant but necessary drawback to a tactic that pays an overwhelming majority of the time.
There’s a line from possibly the most popular poker movie of all-time, Rounders that goes “Few players recall big pots they have won, strange as it seems, but every player can remember with remarkable accuracy the outstanding tough beats of his career.”
I can confirm that while I am in every sense a recreational player, I’ve won and lost some big pots and the ones I lost stay with me more than the wins.
In fact, I took a particular beat holding Ace/King suited and flopped the nut flush. My opponent called my all-in bet and hit a full house on the river. I walked straight to my car, drove the 8 hours home only stopping once for gas and didn’t leave my house for a week.
That loss hurt so bad that I didn’t step through the doors of another casino for over 4 years. You can learn from my misfortune and my mistakes.
Bad Beat Poker Meme
Poker is fun, if it weren’t you wouldn’t play. So, for every bad break there’s a good break coming your way. That’s one of the beautiful sides of poker, the math never changes.
Don’t go on tilt because an opponent caught a huge break. There are only 52 cards in a deck and one of them had to come up.
The key is to learn how to handle situations like this, and to make sure that your game is not adversely affected by factors outside of your control.
The short-term effect of luck in poker – both good and bad – is known as “variance”. Good players accept variance as part of poker, and work on reducing its influence on their own game.
The Bad Beat
A “bad beat” is the name given to an occurrence in poker where a significantly worse hand beats a better one through fortune alone. The person suffering the “bad beat” plays the hand correctly, gets their money into the pot when they were a long way ahead, but is still beaten by the turn of a card beyond the player’s control.
This is only the case when you have a hand that is a clear favorite, and gives your opponent very little chance of catching up. Some inexperienced players will wrongly recall a “bad beat” where their hand was only a marginal favourite. See the following examples:
Example: A genuine bad beat
- Player 1 has A♥A♦. Player 2 has A♣K♥. Both players are all in on a flop of 7♣J♥J♠ Player 1 is 98% favourite.
- Player 2 can only win if the two remaining cards are either the two remaining kings to make a full house, or a queen and a ten to make a straight. The pot would be split if the two remaining cards are both jacks to make four-of-a-kind jacks with an ace-kicker.
- If the turn is K♠ and the river is K♠, then Player 2 wins the pot and Player 1 can legitimately claim a bad beat!
Example: Not such a bad beat
- Player 1 has 7♠4♠ in late position and pushes all-in before the flop. Player 2 has a very good hand in A♥K♣ and calls.
- The board runs out 3♦7♣9♥10♥Q♠. Player 1 wins the hand with a pair of sevens.
Despite A♥K♣ being a strong hand, it is only a 60% favourite before the flop, and will lose four times out of ten. This isn’t enough to constitute a bad beat.
It is interesting to note that players often remember bad beats more than those situations where luck was on their side.
There is also a common misconception that there are more bad beats dealt online than in the live game, but this is not true. Statistically speaking, they occur at the same frequency whether you play online or in a casino, but because you can play more hands per hour online, the probability that players will experience what they perceive to be bad beats will inevitably increase.
Reflecting on Bad Beats
The best way to recover after a bad beat is to remember that you will make money from your opponent in the long run if they keep making the same bad plays. Instead of getting angry, exploit their weakness for maximum profit.
The laws of probability and mathematics mean that the player who keeps putting all of their chips at risk with the worse hand will lose in the long run, which actually makes that player the kind you want at your table. As the author Matthew Hilger said: “Bad beats are a good poker player’s friend.”
Downswing
A downswing describes a short period in your poker career when you are making losses despite playing correctly. The cards do not fall in your favor and you are often losing pots you were favorite to win. At times like this, it is vital to take note of the following advice:
1.Beware of Tilt
“Tilt” is the emotional state that makes it impossible for you to play your best poker. It can be triggered by a downswing and leads to even more losses as you abandon correct strategy and begin making plays you know to be poor. If you find yourself emotionally affected while playing poker, it is encouraged to take a break as you recover to an optimal state to continue playing.
2.Manage Your Bankroll Carefully
Bad Beat Poker Club
Your “bankroll” is the amount of money you have set aside away from personal finances to play poker. Solid bankroll management is vital during a downswing, as there is a risk that you could lose your entire bankroll by making foolish mistakes. If you are suffering a downswing, you should move down a limit or play fewer tables in order to avoid bigger losses.
3. Avoid Making Irrational Changes to Your Game
A downswing may cause a loss of confidence and prompt you to doubt your own abilities. It may make you doubt your game, resulting in you making changes to your usual style. This can often be even more harmful and should be avoided in most cases, even if it seems to be working in the short term. By all means expand your knowledge of the game by learning new tactics and switching gears when necessary, but avoid abandoning the proven basic strategies, such as using a tight-aggressive playing style.
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Upswing
Upswing is the opposite of a downswing; a period of time where you experience an incredible run of good cards at the right time, leading to above average profits. When things are this good, it makes playing poker fun and gives your game a confidence boost.
Upswings can also be dangerous, however. They can cause you to start overestimating your abilities, play too many hands and bluff too often. It is easy to start thinking that you can do no wrong, and start making mistakes without realising them. This too should be avoided.
The most damaging mistake to make during an upswing is to start playing at a higher level, simply because you have made a significant amount of money in a short space of time. This can be disastrous, as your good run can end at any moment. Even worse, you could quickly risk losing your bankroll by playing out of your depth.
Bankroll management is therefore just as vital during an upswing as it is during a downswing.
Conclusion
Luck is a factor in poker over which we have no control. It can play a big role in the short-run, but the better player will always prevail in the long game. The ability to handle bad beats, downswings, upswings and bankroll management are skills that will serve you well long term.
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