JV'S KILLER POKER:
BEATS

BY: John Vorhaus

I'm going to beat you over the head with this because it's so important: There are no bad beats, only temporary setbacks. Again: There are no bad beats, only temporary setbacks.

Against an opponent I identify as a total woodentop (oak from the neck up) I raise preflop with K-K. The flop comes K-x-x with one club. He calls all the way and catches runner-runner clubs to beat me with 8-4. I don't even bother to wonder why he called in the first place. Some people just do.

But hey, there are no bad beats, only temporary setbacks. A few hands later, the very same player calls to the bitter end with the idiot end of the straight, and I get all my money back and then some. Which just goes to demonstrate that blind luck may be lucky, but it's blind just the same. Eventually the bad play of bad players will cost them everything they have.

In the meantime, remember: There are no bad beats, only temporary setbacks.

Against an opponent I don't know very well, I watch the board pair on the river and then watch my opponent check disconsolately. I bet - and he raises, taking the pot with a late-blooming full house. He has fooled me with a false tell. Absolutely sucked me in. Yes, he caught a card on the river to set up the play, but who fell into his trap? Me. That was me. I got spanked, and deservedly so. This is not a bad beat. This is an opportunity to learn about my opponent and learn from my mistakes. The only real question is: Will I?

Can you guess what I'm going to say next? There are no bad beats, only temporary setbacks. A beat only turns bad when you use it as a weapon against yourself - when, for example, you use a bad beat as permission to go on tilt. Your (il)logic runs this way: "The poker gods hate me, so it doesn't matter what I do, and since good cards obviously can't win, maybe bad cards can."

What will it take to convince you? There are no bad beats, only temporary setbacks. Recently I played in a hold 'em tournament with the following wrinkle: Five players out of 150 had $100 bounties on their heads - a very high bounty, considering that the tournament buy-in was also $100. One marked man went all-in, and the player to his left drew a bead on that juicy bounty with the pocket aces he felt extremely fortunate to be holding in that situation. And he figured to have a lock when the flop comes A-9-9. Can you guess how the story ends? Our hero lost the pot and the bounty when the all-in player turned over, yep that's right, pocket nines. These things happen. They happen all the time.

About that time, a friend of our hero came over, having just busted out of the tournament. Although our hero had a legitimate (and really interesting) bad beat story to tell, the friend wasn't listening. The friend was in so much pain from having busted out of the tournament that she had to yammer on and on about her bad beat, just to get some relief from the sorrow and remorse she felt.

You learn a lot about the human condition by watching how people treat their beats. The friend, of course, was already out of the tournament, having played herself out of it, I have no doubt. But our hero recovered from his stunning reversal and crawled all the way to the final table. Sing it with me now: There are no bad beats, only temporary setbacks.

You can avoid some bad beats just by staying out of trouble. In other words (and man, this is sage advice) don't do stupid things. Make automatic decisions automatically. Why would you want to be calling a raise with 8-4 offsuit ever? So you can catch top pair and a poor straight draw when the flop comes 8-7-6? Only to lose when overcards hit on the turn and the river? So you can then scream bad beat, bad beat? That's not a bad beat, pal, that's bad play.

The minute we get lucky we get frisky, and it's almost always a mistake. If you're running well, you probably have a good image, a "Don't mess with me because you can't possibly out-think me or out-play" image. You do want to press your edge, of course, but you don't want to squander it on meaningless reckless weak adventures. Sure you can raise with A-6, but the first time you get called down and out-kicked (by someone playing a sensible A-K) you lose all the image equity you had. Why would you want to do that? Are you trying to lose? What are you trying to prove?

Poker is so simple, man. Really, truly it is. For success in poker, you don't have to be a great player or even a good player - just better than bad players. And that's not hard. Man, that's easy. Some people are so bad that any time they act it's a mistake. You can beat them - so long as you don't sink to their level.

Just expect them to get lucky every now and then - because they will - and just remember that there are no bad beats, only temporary setbacks. If bad players didn't ever get lucky, they couldn't ever play, and if they couldn't ever play, you couldn't ever take their money away. And that would be a bad beat indeed.

(John Vorhaus is author of the KILLER POKER series and News Ambassador for UltimateBet.com.)