Quote:
Originally Posted by RiverDood
You're not doing anything wrong except getting grumpy about a fact of life.
Bad beats are part of life. They ensure that the guy with 93o keeps coming back without adjusting his loose/sloppy style. Over the long run, you win against such opponents. Your own results at the start of your post attest to this.
In the short run, people sometimes hit five-outers on the river. If you're playing disciplined poker and your opponents aren't, most of the times you bust out or get decimated, it will be because of a bad beat. That's because you're seldom getting your chips in the middle with the worst of it. You're usually the favorite, but luck will knock you down every now and then. Iif you're counting on winning those hands every time, that's just not how it works. Every now and then, the underdog draws out on you.
+1
I was just ruminating on this the other day. Had a bad beat at a final table leaving me out as bubble boy. I had flopped a set of 7s on AJ7 board with two hearts. I bet 2/3 pot, which was about 20% of my stack and villain called. Turn is King of diamonds, which I view as a perfect card, since it hits a lot of villain's two-pair range (AK, KJ, K7) and is a great card for him to try to bluff me on, and he only has QT if they are both hearts. I bet, he shoved, I called confidently, and he turned over Q
T
. I was knocked out, no cash, and fumed about it. The next day driving to work I really thought about it and realized that if I knew what his hand was on the flop I would say that I want him to make that call 100% of the time. I'm a huge favorite and he's drawing to 4 outs. Unless he hits the King on the turn, I'm golden. If he whiffs the turn he probably gives up, but if he hits a queen or ten maybe he sticks around and stacks off more chips to me. So, if I play that same hand 100 times I'm winning way more than I'm losing. Every once in a while he's going to hit his 4-outer and beat me (like this one), but I can't let myself get upset about that. I got it in good and I can't get away from it (still have 10 outs on the river), so I did nothing wrong and would play it the same again the next time.
Moral -- learn to roll with the bad beats and play the "long" game where in the long run the probabilities will play out in your favor if you continue to get it in good. It looks like you're doing fine -- don't expect to win every time and don't expect to win 100% of the time when you are an 80% favorite -- 20% of the time the other guy is going to suck out on you.