totallyirreverent.com

How do you handle a bad beat when playing poker? Most people don’t handle them well. They complain. They call the opponent all kinds of names. They try to educate the opponent on why his play was a bad one. They even say things like “If it wasn’t for luck, I would never lose”. Anyone remember who said that?

Take enough bad beats in one session and most people will compound their losses by tilting away more money.

I used to be one of these kinds of players.

I knew I was playing well, but the outdraws were getting to me mentally as I played each session. I would sit back after the session was over and think, “If that guy didn’t get so lucky in that one hand, I would’ve won $400 instead of $100”. You get the idea. People think this same way, I used to.

I decided to start calculating the “Equity” of all of the hands that I either called an all in, or I put the opponent all in with cards still to come. After all, you can’t get outdrawn if the cards are all out.

I figured that after doing this for a while, I would be able to see if the odds really do work out in the long run (and exactly how long is “long run”). If I could get my money in, as a big favorite the majority of the time, then I would have to win right?

I wanted to be the big favorite as close to 80% of the time as possible. By big favorite, I don’t mean I have vs and we get all in preflop. I’m talking about hands like this: I have . The opponent has . The board shows . I’m a 4-1 favorite here.

After about 70 or so of these hands, my Equity in these hands and my actual results of the hands were close to the same number.

Let me give you another hand example to drive this point home. When you get all in pre-flop for $100 with vs ‘X’ and you win $100 you think “I deserve that $100″. When you lose all in preflop vs ‘X’ and lose you think: I lost $100. ”

But when you win the $100, you don’t actually deserve $100. You deserve about $76. Your Equity is about $76 depending on suits. So you actually won more than you should. You are a 4-1 favorite here, so you are “supposed” to lose 1 out of 5 of those. It really does work out in the end.

When you lose a monster pot like this you always here people say “you want him to call in that spot because you were way ahead”. I used to think to myself “great, but he still took my money and will just lose it to someone else.”

The fact of the matter is when I get all in preflop vs ‘X’ for $100. I win $76 no matter what the outcome of the hand. It won’t show up as $76 in my bankroll right now, but it is $76 none the less. Since I play alot, I will play many, many of these type hands and it WILL work out in the long run that I win $76 on these hands.

I’ve worked this out (done my homework), a sense of confidence and calmness has come over me. I still don’t like seeing the chips in ‘X’s” stack, but it doesn’t bother me as much.

I concentrate on hitting my equity goals and let the poker gods sort the rest out.