Poker, like our whole life, consists of successes and failures that replace each other. Such is the game. Moreover, success here is rarely the result of banal luck. It depends more on the ability to make the right decisions, so that your earnings are not too dependent on an occasion that is not always happy. This is why, over time, there have been so many poker strategies and so many papers on self-control while playing.
But study at least a hundred strategies, re-read a thousand works on the psychology of the game – that very luck, on which you don’t want to depend, will certainly want to remind you of itself. And if it is out of sorts and decides to be unlucky, it will present you with a bad beat.
In fact, luck really doesn’t matter much in poker. It’s simple – if you play well, you win. If you do not have certain skills and mastery, as a rule, you lose to the one who has them. But this rule works in the long run. Sometimes there are such time intervals when the outcome of the game does not depend on skill. It happens that a clearly superior hand loses, because the opponent on the river gets all the cards he needs. This is the classic bad beat.
Bad beats do not always fall on your head like a natural disaster, making it impossible to miss it. Some of them can be avoided. Of course, we are not talking about a situation where your opponent was lucky with a full house or a three of a kind with a small pocket pair in hand. But the situation of losing a made hand with top pair from a flush or straight draw on the river could have a different outcome.
Some people believe that only theorists can successfully dodge bad beats. Of course, at first glance, the thought arises that it is unlikely that a worthy opponent will pull a straight draw two streets, knowing that it will cost him so dearly. But, on reflection, you will agree that if he is confident in his cards and decided to draw his unfinished combination, then an aggressive play of a strong card in order to maximize drawing money from the opponent is a very correct decision, this is the tactic of the game that will lead to success.
Players who successfully deal with bad beats tend to behave in a certain way in online poker rooms, where several tables participate in the game at once, and therefore bad beats happen much more often. There is only one way to reduce their number – by focusing on tight play. Only by playing the nuts aggressively and knocking as many players out of the pot as possible will you increase your chance of winning. Of course, against three opponents with pocket aces, even the mathematical expectation of winning is 50%. And yet, don’t let your opponent fall into their own outs. Yes, you won’t knock the whole stack out of him in one hand. But you won’t lose on a bad beat either.
Although, if you lose, what the trouble is? Only beginner players can afford to get upset over a bad beat, and especially weak ones in a psychological sense can even tilt. Professionals treat this trouble philosophically, hone their skills and develop a game strategy that helps them to avoid getting hit by bad beats, or to minimize their number.
And then, you must admit that without an element of luck or bad luck, any game becomes boring. After all, it is the realization that luck can interfere with the course of the game at any moment that inspires newcomers to play with experienced professionals, giving them a chance to win. This means that poker has the opportunity to live and develop.