I’m always keen to listen to bad beat stories, but not always to sympathize with the complainant. Bad Beat stories are as you’d expect never objective and as such it’s often fun to read between the lines and figure out what REALLY happened. There have been studies that subject a group of 10 people to the exact same experience at the exact same time, then a week later they have the 10 people write down what happened and all 10 accounts are dramatically different. Bad beats are a little like this only exaggerated. For one thing in any bad beat story {Or poker story for that matter} there is a villain. In a bad beat story they are almost always portrayed as some unthinking idiot who’s never played poker before in their life, cruising through the tournament like a wreaking ball unaware of the “norms” of poker and mathematically retarded. The Complainant was always 100% aware of the odds, what reaction they intended to provoke, and their opponents cards. Yet some how, God, Alah and Jah conspired against them and now here they are talking to you about how poorly someone else played a hand.

Meanwhile this is shuffling through my head while they explain what happened:

The Villain had 3 Outs…

3 outs 2 outs 5 outs 17 outs, they’re all outs. That means that your opponent has a chance. And let face it even a 1 outter on the river is a 2% Chance, hardly lotto { you have a .00026% chance of winning lotto }

The villain played it soooo badly…

You want them to play it badly! All the way through this you should have been high fiving yourself. In what other activity do you hear a competitor complaining about how “bad” his opponent was?! Here’s someone who only has 3 outs and they have their stack in. I’ll take that poker any day of the week! Now let’s think it through. Did you play the hand perfectly? Because if you did, then what are you angry about? If you didn’t, may be hit yourself in the face and stop telling me about how bad the beat was.

A while back Eric Assadourian gave me some great advice. He said that in any poker tournament, If you run deep you’ll be bad beat. Just make sure you have them significantly covered when it happens. That advice has changed the way I see the beats when they come. If it happens and I’m on the rail it’s because I didn’t chip up enough in the early levels to have the scmuck covered. Who’s fault is that.

BHS