Poker News

Tom Leonard

Today let’s discuss everyone’s favorite subject, Bad Beats. I make that statement with my tongue planted firmly in my cheek. As you read the title of this column you may well have concluded that Leonard has truly lost it! I can almost hear the groans…”Embracing Bad Beats”…and you’re thinking, “How can I embrace something I despise?”Well, hear me out as to why you should really be embracing bad beats and welcoming them to your game.

A bad beat occurs when an opponent’s hand, that is a significant underdog to yours, “catches lucky” and winds up being the winner much to your chagrin. Now granted, that stings but you should begin to embrace this unpleasant occurrence. Why? Let me take you through an example to demonstrate my thesis. Let’s say that you bring it in from early position with a raise holding Ace- Queen suited. Only the big blind calls. The flop comes A-Q-3 and the big blind checks and then calls your bet. The turn card is a four with no flush opportunities available and again the big blind checks and again calls your bet. The river is a six and again your opponent checks but now, lo and behold, check raises your bet. You see the potential straight on the board although you have trouble believing 2-5 or 5-7 is your opponent’s holding based upon your pre-flop raise, and a flop which contained an Ace and a Queen. You believe you have fallen victim to a slow played set and just make the crying call. Your eyebrows shoot up as the big blind turns over a 5- 7 off suit. You contain your emotions and tap the table along with the insincere, “Nice hand”. It is at this juncture that some players just lose it and either explode or quietly begin to tilt.

When an unfortunate occurrence, such as the above example, momentarily takes your breath away, you need to take it in stride and realize you are playing with an extremely weak opponent who has only “borrowed” your chips. Don’t let it upset you but rather continue to play solid poker and get your chips back with the interest you deserve. Let’s further suppose that you knew your opponent’s hole cards throughout the hand. Would you have wanted him to call your raise pre-flop? You betcha! Would you have wanted him to call your post flop bet? You betcha! Would you have wanted him to call your turn bet? You betcha! Of course you didn’t want him to suck out but until that dastardly river card gave him a winner, you were value betting the best hand. You should be thanking these terrible players who chase with weak hands and call your value bets because that is where your profit comes from. If some chowder head is drawing to an inside straight with one card to come against your superior hand, he is 11-1 against hitting his straight and is making a bad call by accepting pot odds half of what he needs to proceed. Here is the bad news…..odds of 11-1 against aren’t exactly like hitting the lottery. Sometimes even though these chowder heads take the worst of it, they will catch their miracle card and beat you.

Our goal for this session is to simply remember, a bad beat is really just a good, solid, value bet gone awry. You need to focus on all the many times that those weak opponents are taking the worst of it and don’t get there. It’s the value bets against these calling stations that when they don’t go awry make your profit. See you next “TIME”.

Filed under: Poker News