How the hell do you deal with bad beats?

[mattmcegg]

Read the Zen of Poker. I tend to just nod my head and say something like, "Standard". "gg nh" in the chat. dont let it bother u man. I'm actually usually happy that I got all my money in good - and stick to thoughts like that, instead of blaming Lee, etc.

[MJBuddy]

I've gotten miles beyond where I was even a month ago in bad beat management. This is due to the following things:

-Big cashes and taking down big MTTs.

-Poker guys on aim/etc. who are the first and quickest to say "Hey, standard, gg. Sucks man. Don't tilt." This keeps you balanced. I probably owe them nearly a hundred dollars in money saved from not tilting off my game. I haven't in a long time.

-General lack-of-suprise. The worst beats I ran into recently was busting 15th after being 4/16 and getting it in as a 70-80% favorite against a donk station three hands in a row and somehow escaping with my stack only to bust AJ > AQ against the same guy. Drove me nuts. Felt like I lost hundreds. Then I thought of the day when I ran up a few hundred and made a FT with AQ > AA and QT > AA as a shortstack twice where I won large pots (playing correctly. I ran ranges of all of these hands because calling off my stack is where I get really nitty).

Just keep playing. Keep optimistic.

[mflip]

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I've gotten miles beyond where I was even a month ago in bad beat management. This is due to the following things:

-Big cashes and taking down big MTTs.

-Poker guys on aim/etc. who are the first and quickest to say "Hey, standard, gg. Sucks man. Don't tilt." This keeps you balanced. I probably owe them nearly a hundred dollars in money saved from not tilting off my game. I haven't in a long time.

-General lack-of-suprise. The worst beats I ran into recently was busting 15th after being 4/16 and getting it in as a 70-80% favorite against a donk station three hands in a row and somehow escaping with my stack only to bust AJ > AQ against the same guy. Drove me nuts. Felt like I lost hundreds. Then I thought of the day when I ran up a few hundred and made a FT with AQ > AA and QT > AA as a shortstack twice where I won large pots (playing correctly. I ran ranges of all of these hands because calling off my stack is where I get really nitty).

Just keep playing. Keep optimistic.

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lol, usually I'm the one complaining about them on aim/msn. It usually helps though so that you aren't dwelling on it.

[MJBuddy]

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I've gotten miles beyond where I was even a month ago in bad beat management. This is due to the following things:

-Big cashes and taking down big MTTs.

-Poker guys on aim/etc. who are the first and quickest to say "Hey, standard, gg. Sucks man. Don't tilt." This keeps you balanced. I probably owe them nearly a hundred dollars in money saved from not tilting off my game. I haven't in a long time.

-General lack-of-suprise. The worst beats I ran into recently was busting 15th after being 4/16 and getting it in as a 70-80% favorite against a donk station three hands in a row and somehow escaping with my stack only to bust AJ > AQ against the same guy. Drove me nuts. Felt like I lost hundreds. Then I thought of the day when I ran up a few hundred and made a FT with AQ > AA and QT > AA as a shortstack twice where I won large pots (playing correctly. I ran ranges of all of these hands because calling off my stack is where I get really nitty).

Just keep playing. Keep optimistic.

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lol, usually I'm the one complaining about them on aim/msn. It usually helps though so that you aren't dwelling on it.

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Yeah but you know firsthand the volume of "safsdfsadfwafwesf" hands I run into a night :P, likewise you run into way more than I do. Keeping perspective helps a bunch.

[paddymcg21]

Watch some porn and treat yourself to a hand shandy!

In all seriousness I just think of all the players who are much better than me who have had far worse runs of luck than I have. Basically if a solid player who profits 30k a year online is going through horrible bad beats then it kind of makes you feel like you're not the only one. Just think of people like Phil Hellmuth, after all if there was no luck you'd probably win em all and that would just get boring. Seriously though, watch most of the top pros when they get busted out by a bad beat. They smile, they say nice hand, they shake hands and they move onto the next game. I try so hard to stay Chris Ferguson esq but I sometimes drift to poker brat mode.

[typically]

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I know exactly what you are talking about. I'm about to the point that I'm going to quit playing pstars since it is so ridiculous. I get tired of losing to jackass's who will call any raise with any ace or any two suit cards.

Maybe congress needs to hold committee hearings on the supposed randomness of online poker before passing any bills regarding online poker as a game of skill. Ban it all together. LOL

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Can you explain the benefit that poker sites have by rigging their sites?

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Not saying I believe they are rigged, but the advantage - assuming they could devise a way to avoid detection - would be to ensure a steady stream of amateurs/fish to the game by assuring stupid -EV plays get paid off more usually than they should given a random distribution. This is profitable in many ways, particularly by assuring a larger clientele, and also encouraging higher skilled players to stick around; the large base also allows for larger incentives and tourneys to be offered, encouraging high stakes games, etc. I think certain manipulations of this sort can certainly be profitable if you think about it.

That said, I just don't buy into it, at least at Stars whose marketing and incentives programs have been far more effective (in my imagination anyways) than the high-risk, questionable payoff strategy of odds rigging. Besides, if their deals are manipulated in any systematic way, this is almost certainly detectable by applying simple statistical analysis... wonder if this has ever been done?

[BlueEcho]

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I know exactly what you are talking about. I'm about to the point that I'm going to quit playing pstars since it is so ridiculous. I get tired of losing to jackass's who will call any raise with any ace or any two suit cards.

Maybe congress needs to hold committee hearings on the supposed randomness of online poker before passing any bills regarding online poker as a game of skill. Ban it all together. LOL

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I really LOLed when I realized this was your lucky 13th post!

[bogey1]

Individual beats aren't so bad. It's the 1 ITM in 20 tournaments streak I'm on now that's killing me. I play the $60 45-man turbos. In 12 games last night I was in the final 15 seven times. In those, you reach that point where one more all-in win and you're set to get 2-10x your buying back. I lost every god damn time.

That's what sends me on tilt, losing long, long streaks of all-ins. I was 2 for 27 yesterday (that's ahead, even, or behind). Made $1800 over the weekend...gave back $1200 in 3 hours. Worst MTT night of my life. Went from nearly 20% ROI in the 45-man turbos to 5% after that streak.

[Xanthro]

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Individual beats aren't so bad. It's the 1 ITM in 20 tournaments streak I'm on now that's killing me. I play the $60 45-man turbos. In 12 games last night I was in the final 15 seven times. In those, you reach that point where one more all-in win and you're set to get 2-10x your buying back. I lost every god damn time.

That's what sends me on tilt, losing long, long streaks of all-ins. I was 2 for 27 yesterday (that's ahead, even, or behind). Made $1800 over the weekend...gave back $1200 in 3 hours. Worst MTT night of my life. Went from nearly 20% ROI in the 45-man turbos to 5% after that streak.

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That's really what I'm talking about. I've now cashed in 1 of the last 32 MTT (180/$4.40) and the crashed at between 20 and 40 almost every time. What's worse, is the most I've been behind (when all in and covered) is A3d vs A5h, which was a chop.

Each tourny averages 3 bad beats, where I lose as a 70% or better favorite. What really sucks, is I'm not that good. It's not like I can make up for this by exceedingly good play, and fear it's making me play less well by affecting me in ways that I'm unaware.

In probably 15 of the last 32, I win that last hand I'm easily at the final table with a large stack, instead I bust out on the bubble. Yet, obviously you can't fold KK or QQ against a big stack limper and small stack push. Or fold AK here either. This is my number one method of getting busted. A rag hits against KK or K rag hits against QQ.

I also don't have thousands of games under my belt, so emotionally dealing with the suckouts is hard. It seems some people like to scream, maybe I should try that after each suck out so it doesn't build up. I tend to shrug off one or two in a tourny, then get really angry at the third, and tend to explode on the fourth.

Then I have to not play for a day till I calm down.

[rjsob]

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I know exactly what you are talking about. I'm about to the point that I'm going to quit playing pstars since it is so ridiculous. I get tired of losing to jackass's who will call any raise with any ace or any two suit cards.

Maybe congress needs to hold committee hearings on the supposed randomness of online poker before passing any bills regarding online poker as a game of skill. Ban it all together. LOL

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Without those JA's who call any raise with an A or two suited cards, how would we make any real money? When I take a bad beat, I ask myself if I wanted them to call? The answer, of course, is yes.

I do find that changing sites helps with my own psychology. So if I have a bad run on stars, I go to FT or the other way around. I know there is no real truth in that, but it just helps to change the venue.