The forum is full of people complaining about their bad beats and bad luck, some of them also speculating, if the poker site is rigged. And sure enough variance can be brutal, and all poker players will go through periods, where everything seem to go against them for extended periods of time. However when we have these downswings, almost always it will also affect our play to some extend. And in those hands, where we did not play our A-game, are the ones that matter.

Just to give an example during the weekend I played 18 MTTs on 888 Poker, and I only min-cashed in one and took down a few relatively insignificant bounties in another for a total ROI of -80% of so. Not great, and for sure there was some element of bad luck involved in this. But I also did not play my A-game, which this hand is an example of:

CardsChat Poker Hands Converter

When a hand like this happen, some people will tend to get very hung up on the fact, the Villain got lucky against them and cracked their aces. And sure enough this was very lucky for him. But if we take a bit of effort to do some hand reading here and put him on a range, calling him all the way down was almost certainly not a profitable decision.

Because what is he really donk betting with into the preflop 3-better and another guy on QQ7 rainbow, and then continue to fire the turn and jam the river? We are going to get shown QX here an enormously high percentage of the time, and calling down was frankly a tilted play.

The reason, I share this, is to encourage all those people, who feel, they are running bad, to take an honest and critical look at their game. Because I am sure, nearly everyone can find hands like this, if they take some time and effort to look for them. And cleaning this up as much as possible is the way to achieve long term success in poker

I was expecting AQ, maybe the 77 on the villain's hand... that is a little bit too much and, yes, he got lucky, and yes, after the turn I'd say it would better let go of the Aces. But of course you know it.
Nice post! Thanks!

Poker is a remarkable game, as there is both skill and luck in play. The luck element will allow the bad players to form and maintain very wrong ideas about why they're losing and never have to face the fact that they are just playing the game badly.

Originally Posted by demesquita

and yes, after the turn I'd say it would better let go of the Aces.

The other option is to call turn and fold river. Especially on this river card that can have some merits as well, because now he is for sure valuebetting all his QX. If the river card was a blank, he might actually check hands like QJs or QTs, which would leave him with a thinner value range and therefore potentially more bluffs. This is of course assuming, that he even have bluffs, which in this case I frankly dont know. He was a solid regular, but I did not know him that well.

Knowing a little about the villain is always essential, but here, few players are firing multiple barrels, multi-handed, with that action/board.

It's hard to let the rockets go but they are a double edged sword and against better players it's easier to win a small pot and lose a big pot, than it is to win a big pot with the pair.

With regards to running bad, more people feel they are running bad if they get it in pre-F w/ AA and lose to Q 10 especially if every big pair in their session gets in pre-flop and loses. Once you have multi street action, your decisions are more important than running badly or not, however wonderful it is to get hit by the deck over and over again.