Get over your Bad Beats:

When it comes to highs and lows, poker has to be the definitive game.
There are very few other activities that can have you pumping your first
in delight one minute, and then leave you on the verge of tears a couple
of minutes later as one of your opponents decimates your chip stack.

If this opponent has taken most of your chips by hitting a highly
improbable hand, then you’re going to be feeling even worse. However,
these so called “Bad Beats” are a part of poker and they must be
overcome if you are to be a successful player.

No matter how bad it feels, bad beats mustn’t be ignored. If you start
trying to figure out where you went wrong or second-guessing your
actions, then you’re never going to improve your game over the long term.

Instead, you need to concentrate on putting the hand behind you and
moving on. The next few hands after a bad loss need to be played as
though you’ve picked up a large pile of chips rather than just lost a
load. If you let the loss weigh heavily on your mind, you can find
yourself going on tilt, which can seriously affect your chances of recovery.

 Now I know it’s a lot easier say that you need to “get over a bad beat”
and a lot harder to actually do it. With that in mind, I’ve come up with
a few tips which will hopefully help you through your next moment of
frustration.

The first thing to say is that you need to keep your mouth shut. Bad
Beats are the worst parts of poker and while nobody wants to suffer from
one, but everyone will have experienced a handful of them at some point
in their playing career.

That means they don’t want to hear about how you have suffered – so
there’s no point moaning. You’re not going to get any sympathy from
them, and at worst you’re going to be signaling to your opponents that
you’re seriously ruffled.

So if you can’t rant to your opponents, what can you do?

Well luckily for you, I’ve been in this situation a few times so here
are a few things that I’ve found to be useful during those times when
you’re still trying to figure out what went wrong.

Firstly, give yourself a set period of time to vent your frustration and
then get on with things. I find sixty seconds is a good time frame to
shout at the screen, bang your fist on the table and shout every
obscenity you can think of at the screen. Once you’ve got all that out
of the way, sit back down and concentrate on your next hand.

Obviously this only works if you’re playing poker in the comfort of your
own home. If you’re in a casino, then this sort of behavior will just
lead you to being thrown out by the nearest security guard.

So rather than causing a scene, head off to the bar for another drink.
Go to the bathroom. Chat to a friend or put a few coins in the slot
machine. Do whatever you have to do to take your mind off what has just
happened.

After that, head back to the table, sit down with a big smile and pick
up your hole cards.

My second tip is to have faith in your abilities as a poker player. You
may have lost a lot of chips, but you were the better player in the hand
that you lost. You believed you had the strongest hand, and you bet on
it. Your poker senses served you correctly, and it was only a freak of
nature that prevented you from adding to your chip pile.

Your opponent on the other hand will be losing his chips very shortly if
he continues to play like that … so you just need to make sure that
you’re in the pot the next time that he starts to go crazy!

Finally, if you play your poker online make sure you play at a room that
offers a Bad Beat Jackpot. These kind of jackpots pay out huge sums of
money if your monster hand gets cracked.

For example, a few months ago the Bad Beat Jackpot that is part of the
Carbon Poker Bonus was triggered with those players that were involved in
the hand being paid several hundred thousand dollars each … and let’s
face it, there can’t be a better way of getting over a bad beat than
seeing that sort of cash going into your bankroll!

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