Poker Strategies: Bad Beats

Bad beats suck. Sorry, there's no way to pretty it up. If you have been playing online poker for any amount of time, you know exactly what I mean. Whenever there is a confrontation between luck vs skill, no contest. Luck ALWAYS trumps skill. Fortunately, there are ways to lessen the influence of bad beats.

It is a fact that even 72 offsuit will beat pocket Aces a certain percentage of the time. You can be in about as dominating a position as there is, let's say set over set going to the river. Your opponent has only one out. He's roughly 2 percent to win. Guess what happens next?

So........what do you do?

You can't always tell who the maniac at the table is, and folding pocket pairs or AK pre-flop isn't a good way to build up your chipstack. At least not over the long term. And yes, I have folded AA when I had reason to believe my opponent had me beat (he turned a set of Q's). The key is to not be in too big a hurry. The only hand that can win you the tournament is the last one. Almost any other hand has the potential to put you out or cripple your stack if played poorly.

FREEROLLS and low-limit buyins

I put these together because they are ultimately the same, play-wise. I would suggest only playing these types of tournaments to familiarize yourself with how a new site's interface works, or to practice a new poker strategy without risking your bankroll. The reason is that the level of play is usually very low in these events, with a high percentage of maniacs.

For that reason, I have curtailed my play in freerolls a great deal. The only ones I play now are the feeder tournaments that can earn you a shot at a bigger tournament. I don't have anyting to gain or learn from someone beating me with a river suckout on a hand they should never have seen a flop with. Let me be clear on one thing, I'm not talking about getting beat by bad luck. The bad beats I'm talking about are the one's where you're better than 85 percent to win and end up losing to someone who called your 4x preflop raise with 73 'cause they were suited. AAARRRGGHHH!!!

And that's exactly why I say to avoid these tournaments unless all you want to do is goof for a half hour or so. In addition to the low level of skill normally found, I've also found an unfortunate trend of so-called players getting into these events and intentionally playing badly for no other reason than to try to ruin the game for the beginners who are honestly trying to improve. These guys live to put on the ugliest of beats and have no intention of trying to learn to play properly or improve their game. They don't respect the game or the other players. I don't need the aggravation. My blood pressure is high enough, thank you.

So. While you can't eliminate the bad beats and the resulting aggravation from your poker life, there are some things you can do to reduce their impact.

The first thing is to accept them as part of the cost of doing business as a poker player. There's no defense against a lucky donkey. Second, if you're playing one of these Freerolls or low-limit buy tournaments, you will need to adopt an extremely conservative style for the first stage and into the second.

The poor players will usually, but not always, have weeded themselves out after the first hour or so. After that, you can start playing poker instead of bingo.

Higher limits

It's axiomatic that the higher you go in limit and/or buy-in, the fewer instances of wild play will be found, thereby reducing the number and frequency of bad beats. That's not to say your AA won't get cracked, that's always a possibility, but it's not going to happen as often. (If you have AA and the other guy has KK or QQ and they catch, that's not really considered a bad beat). People have a lot more respect for a game that's costing them $50 or $100 or more to play than they do the micro games.

Once you've developed your skills a bit, do yourself a favor and step up to real money as soon as you can. Moving up in limit is the best way to get out of the bingo parlor.

Online or Live?

If you have the opportunity, play live in a casino as much as possible. Even the lower limits. They have $1/$2 tables in most poker rooms as well as relatively low cost sit-n-go's. I much prefer playing live to online because it's easier to hone your reading skills, the games aren't as fast so you get more felt time for your dollar, and just the fact that you're at a live game as opposed to online will in itself cut down on the ridiculous play. One of the reasons the play is as bad as it is online is because it's so anonymous.

I've gone a bit longer than I thought I would, but this is a topic I am somewhat passionate about. I love the game and I'm not very happy at the state it's fallen to since the Moneymaker boom (no offense Chris). To summarize:

* Only play freerolls and micro games for the fun of it or to learn a new site. It's not worth the aggravation otherwise.

* Move up to real money games as soon as you feel comfortable with your skills and can afford it. Having real money at risk has a wonderfull way of earning a player's respect.

* Play live tournaments as much as you possibly can. People are much more likely to play proper poker face to face, without the anonymity of the computer screen.

Don't let the occasional bad beat get you too discouraged. If the only way you lose is to a bad beat, it means you are consistently going in with the best hand and are well on your way to a winning poker career.

Lawrence Black is an amateur poker enthusiast and author of several articles on poker strategy as well as the blog Win at Texas Holdem