Poker Bad Beat of the day

I have never been a fan of bad beat poker stories and hate listening to them. In my mind bad beats shouldn’t be seen as bad beats at all but just part and parcel of the poker experience. But as I have been involved in online poker I have seen and experienced more bad beats than I can care to remember and I would like to start a bad beat series where I share these with you.

Bad beats can be real mental killers, enough to send many a player over the edge and into full blown tilt play. The feeling of seeing a pot go to someone else that should have been yours can be gut wrenching and especially when the money actually means something to you.

Before we move on, it is best to clarify what a bad beat actually is. It isn’t having something like AA against your opponents flush draw and the flush comes in on the river…..that isn’t a bad beat……that’s just a normal outdraw. But I hope that this series of articles serves to make you feel better the next time that you encounter one.

This hand was played by me at $25-$50 no-limit hold ‘em a few years ago. This hand sticks in my memory because it beat me out of a $10,000 pot and unfortunately, this was made even worse by the fact that I wasn’t properly bankrolled to play this level at that time and I didn’t have a lot of confidence at playing this level.

It was at six max and it was folded to me on the button and I had the Jc-Jd and I raised to $175. The small blind folded but the big blind called. The pot was now $375 and we both had around $5000 each on the table. The flop came Js-8c-2h giving me a very powerful hand. The big blind checked and I wanted to make it seem that I was trying to push him off the hand with a holding like AK, AQ, KQ etc. The big blind was aggressive so I wanted him to make a move on me.

I decided to make what looked like a normal continuation bet as I didn’t want him to be spooked by me checking it back as this looks like I am checking because I am trying to get him to bet. So I bet $275 and he thinks for a while and then check-raises me to $1300….I called. The pot is now at $2975 and the turn card is the 3d and the big blind checks again. I now decide not to slow play this and attempt to stack him and make a half pot bet of $1300…..he thinks again and then shoves all in…..I called.

He shows the 5s-4s so the turn card has given him an eight out straight draw. I sat glued to the screen and when the 6c came on the river, for a second the enormity of what had just happened didn’t sink in until I saw the chips sliding away from my seat on the screen.

To make it worse, he actually typed some things into the chat box that were not very nice which I will not repeat. I immediately left the game feeling stunned. He had attempted to bluff me off a hand that he thought I was semi-bluffing with which I wasn’t as I was in fact holding the nuts and he ended up backing into the nuts himself by the river. Given what odds I was getting and my action in the hand then his move on the turn wasn’t getting much by way of fold equity either.

Of course had I been properly bankrolled for the level that I was playing at then losing $5k as part of a $200k bankroll is no big deal and the power of this beat would have been nullified somewhat.

By Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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