Juicy Stakes Poker is a great online poker room for gamers from true newbies to the most experienced players. Newbies have a lot to learn and absorb about poker. Online poker is not the same as poker with your pals on a weekend night. Even at low stakes, online poker players tend to be better than your buddies.
The result is that a lot of poker players, even the most experienced players, suffer a few bad beats as they play. How to deal with a bad beat is a very important aspect of poker. It is especially important in online poker.
What is a Bad Beat?
A bad beat is a totally unexpected loss in a hand. A bad beat should accompany a large pot as the loser bets high thinking that he or she has the better hand. Often, the ultimate winner stays in a hand that they have no mathematical justification for staying in at the stakes presented by the high bet.
In Texas Hold’em, a bad beat often happens on the river card where only one card can beat the apparently stronger hand and that card comes out.
Bad Beats from Misunderstanding an Opponent
Sometimes a bad beat can come about because the player misread the hand. We often see excellent players on YouTube trying to understand a hand based on the way the hand has played out so far.
A good player who cannot figure out a hand and bets, calls, or raises with the weaker hand and loses can also be said to have suffered a bad beat.
Staying Cool or Losing Control
There are really only two ways to deal with a bad beat. The better way, by far, is to stay cool. Maintaining one’s composure may spur on a good player to redouble his or her efforts to pay close attention to every detail of every hand. It may result in a player feeling that she or he has learned something valuable about an opponent.
Accepting One Day’s Losses by Looking to the Future
A bad beat may cause a player to pack it in and call it a day. This is the way an emotionally healthy player deals with a loss big enough to cause them to end their participation in that game.
Always remember that when you play online poker here at Juicy Stakes or at any reputable online poker room, there is always tomorrow or the next day. Even if you play only once a week or so, that is a lot more poker playing than the overwhelming majority of players get at a land-based poker room.
How Do Players Stay Composed after a Bad Beat?
The best way ─ some might say the only way ─ to deal with a bad beat is to train yourself to stay composed in a difficult situation. People can learn to stay composed when they are under threat and that skill can be translated into a healthy response to a bad beat in poker.
Keeping a proper perspective on a bad beat in poker is also a healthy way to deal with it. It requires a few sound practices from players.
- Players should play at the stakes level that best reflects their skill at poker.
- Honest self-awareness. This involves knowing one’s weaknesses better than knowing one’s strengths.
- Setting a sound monetary budget for poker.
- Maintain a proper mindset for poker and for all other difficult situations that come up.
How Can a Player Determine Their Proper Stakes Level?
This is the first step in maintaining honest self-awareness. A lot of poker players feel that they should be playing at higher stakes where the pots and the wins are bigger.
This is at once an objective and a subjective area. A player who is playing at a stakes level that is too high simply knows it. For such a player to continue to play at an overly high stakes level is a clear sign that they should stop playing poker altogether until they are ready to play at the level that is best for their skill and bankroll.
Establish Healthy Mindfulness
This is usually called having the right mindset. Everyone needs to have a healthy mindset to deal with all sorts of challenges. The best way to describe a healthy mindset is that it is a positive way of looking at things rather than a negative way to look at things.
People who maintain a positive outlook in general often benefit from even the most difficult challenges. This translates very well to poker and is an excellent way to deal with life in general.
A negative mindset is the prescription for getting into a rut and not being able to get out of it. A bad beat that digs a rut deeper is a very bad beat indeed. With a healthy perspective on poker as a great GAME that we enjoy playing for money, we can find the best amount of money to play with and the best time frame to play in.
Players Combat Bad Beats with Calming Techniques
Deep breathing is a calming technique. Yoga, meditation, and Tai Chi are other calming techniques. People who practice any of the many such methods of staying calm will be much more likely to weather a bad beat than people who never deal in general with calming themselves.
Affirm Yourself
This is a way of expressing your love for yourself. People who do this openly are usually called egotists. Affirmation is best done quietly as part of an overall session of self-reflection.
After the Game Analysis
Let’s say that you suffered a bad beat during a game. If you are studying poker, you will also be studying your hands. An honest analysis of the bad beat will show that either you played the hand wrong or you played it correctly but lost anyway to a bad beat.
In either case, studying hands is a great way to become a better poker player. A bad beat or even just a losing session of poker may teach you areas that you need to work on to improve. Even the worst bad beat can be a learning experience. If you are playing at your own skill and financial level, a bad beat will probably not cost you much and the learning curve might even make the occasional bad beat worthwhile!
Juicy Stakes Poker Offers a World of Great Online Poker
We cater to players of all skill and monetary levels. We also have many promotions where you can add to your bankroll. We have tournaments that also cater to a wide range of players.
We recently changed our sit-and-go tournament to a three-player game. This promotion is called Fast Fortune. It kicks in as soon as any three players sign up to play and make send their buy-in fee. The buy-in fees are relatively small. This is a great way for new players to get a deep exposure to online poker.
