The last time I bad beat anyone...

Maybe 2 weeks ago. I called an extremely short stack all in with 29o pre-flop (I had good pot odds), and hit my 9 on the river.

That's it. Since then I am always the victim of every 3:2 coin flip to 25:1 favorite. In fact from my recent poker memory, the bad beats I give vs. the bad beats I suffer are about 1:10. For every bad beat I give people, I have to swallow it 10 times more. And I don't even slow play, maybe once in 30 hands when I feel absolutely safe. Now I don't have emotion about 2-4 outers on river. I only respond to runner runner straight and flush.

Does this happen to you as well?

Once I read an article saying that if you are always unlucky, you are playing well because you fold when you know you are beaten. But am I folding too much? Am I not seeing enough river as an underdog? For example, if I am a 20% underdog and the raise isn't big, should I just call anyways and try to deliver a bad beat, which would give me a lot more money back? I haven't read any article discussing this, but seriously I am giving it a thought.

When Phil Hellmuth says "I can dodge bullets, baby" I can feel his pain. He can dodge bullets so he rarely bad beats people. Every youtube clip you see about Phil is when he suffers a bad beat and *beep*.

You know, I really love to bad beat people and see their twisted face (or foul language in the chat box). That would balance my anger. Argh...

It sounds to me that you are just selectively remembering all the times that you get sucked out on. The bad beats always stay in your head longer than when you suck out on people. But if you really are getting sucked out on all the time you should just keep playing like you are playing and thing will even out in the long run.

Yes I am still folding when I know I can't win.
Just had another runner runner straight to split my pot.
The guy called all in with K4 on 10 9 8 (I had 10 10), because he felt lucky, lol.
He did get lucky in this case (turn river came 76)

i made a post about what do you think about phill helmuth i put him as a cry baby

ouch, and ouch, i feel your pain, i have made posts similar to this....."in the bad beat section!"

but that aside, i believe that your point about "am I not seeing enough river as an underdog?" is reliant on your odds of getting lucky, and from finding out the hard way, a good poker player, does not rely on luck, in fact, one poster on my thread pointed out that, this "assumtion" alone, questions your integrity as a "good" poker player,

as for the bad beats, take them as they come, they will and have made you a better poker player, there is ALWAYS something you could of done to win/ and by win, that can mean folding.

folding is winning. of course the best hand cant fold, but is your hand really the best hand "only" on the flop/preflop, and turn, the game needs to be played as if you can see all the cards, i believe to minimize the "suck out". because no matter of pot odds, some people will call you down JUST because they like the look of the cards they might get....

wow, hope this has tainted some of your questions/points and hope to hear more respose soon.

peace

It is like the wise Mr. Sklansky (and basically what you yourself) says.

"If you are an excellent player, people are going to draw out on you a lot more than your're going to draw out on them because they're simply going to have the worst hand against you a lot more times than you have the worst hand against them."

....nice summary

Thanks. I guess that I should be proud to say that I have received a few more bad beats since the last post, but have not given any yet.

I wonder whether there is an "ideal" ratio of bad beats Received vs. Delivered. Some people define bad beats as big cards lost to even bigger cards, but that's too wishful to me. My definition of bad beat is narrower - that one receives defeat while he makes the correct decision and the opponent makes a mistake, resulting in a clear biased odds (usually above 3:1) at the point of showdown.

If you are under this standard ratio (say, standard is 1:5 but you are 1:1), you are not folding enough. If you are above this standard ratio (say, 1:10 like me), you are not calling enough. This ratio also depends on opponents. Against weaker players (who call very often) I think the standard ratio should be adjusted down (as we tend to receive a lot more bad beats).

Now if I know where to find a poker hand result database, we should be able to write some simple programs (+ a poker odds calculator) to figure out exactly what this ratio is for a particular player. Now if he is really profitable we can decide whether we want to fold / call more like he does.

Yet somewhere I read that for expert players, some might play very loose and some very tight, yet they are equally profitable in the long run. Now isn't that strange?

ok so i agree to your definition of a bad beat(slightly), when you make the right desicion given the information you have in front of you, but you lose the pot to a statistical underdog(s).


your ratio thing still misses the point a little.

its not about having 1bad beat given:1bad beat recieved. you should never aim to bad beat some one(full stop) to keep up with a quota.

you mentioned weak players call very often.

now ok they are calling every hand, which means they have more chances to win, and more chances to lose, than ANYONE who folds(by folds i mean folding 72 for example).

instead of making statistics about how many bad beats you have given vs recieved, you should entirely be looking at your statistics from THE HANDS YOU PLAYED WIN OR LOSE.

if you play 100 hands and win all of them, thats better than playing 100 hands and winning a few of them?

basically what i mean is the bad beat you recieve is 1 hand they win out of 1000 they lose(because they are simply taking more risks) so if you play 1000 hands playing solid poker, you will win more often in that 1000 than a "donkey" would in 1000 hands.

pheyw.... hope you get the idea...

Well calling more is not the only way to increase bad beats. For example, I can start to play medium hands (such as draws, top pair low kicker) very aggressively, if I detect opponent's weakness. Sometimes my read might screw up and the opponent calls with a decent hand - but I might outdraw him by the end.

I admit that up to this point I NEVER play draws aggressively because I know weak players are still calling anyways, and I will become an underdog! Maybe after I move up limit level I will start doing that. I did receive a lot of bad beats from people who played draw aggressively, though.

I've thought about this, since I felt like being the victum of the same thing, but when I payed more attention to the hand histories I've noticed that I also deliver a lot of bad beats, but just not when all the money was already in the middle. If you're playing against poor players, they won't mind getting all their money in with the worst of it, while you probably will mind and not reraise allin but just call when you're in doubt of your hand.

Say for instance that you're holding AJ on a A34 board with a preflop raise and the raiser leads into you. Some of the bad micro limit players you could be up against would reraise a lot here, thinking: OMG, I have a pair of aces, while you're worring about your kicker. Now if the J hits on the turn, you did suck out, but it feels less like a suckout, because all the money wasn't in the middle already.

I've noticed that I also get lucky very often, it just doesn't feel that way because it was before all the money went in. Hopefully you can make sense of this story .

Indeed, we are cutting our bad beat chance down significantly, by not pushing in when we are not sure we are ahead. When we catch our lucky card, there usually isn't a decisive big bet / showdown yet.

By playing more aggressive we are widening our earning variance, thus welcoming more luck factor in the short run. Is that a good thing for a casual player, who really loves winning but don't care about earning profit?