A moment like this transcends gambling, but it was a brutal beat for anyone with Bills +5 in the 1999 AFC Wild Card Game against the Titans. The kick return for a touchdown not only gave Tennessee the win en route to a Super Bowl appearance, but got the Titans a cover, too. Top 10 Reasons Why Gambling is Bad. Article by lipika bhattacharya, April 21, 2014. Gaming when illegal is called gambling. This is the most crude and layman definition of the vice which involves wagering of money or something of material value. The worst part about this loss is it ended a heater I was on — as bad beats seemingly do (emotional biases are funny). I did at least hit the F5, but what a stunning loss. MLB: Rangers -102 (vs. Athletics) I’ll never forget this entire series, where I lost every bet on the Rangers in heartbreaking fashion.

WSOP presents a clash of a large group of alpha males

by Kevin Blackwood

In July the only thing hotter in Las Vegas than the desert sun is the World Series of Poker. This annual event always attracts the best players from every corner of the planet. It’s an understatement to point out that many of these individuals have big egos. And having so many alpha males under the same roof creates some memorable clashes, much like two rams fighting over a one-way bridge.

A common result is many players blame Lady Luck and bad beats for their early exit when they crash out of a tournament. An oft-repeated quote from Phil Hellmuth is “If there weren’t luck involved, I guess I’d win every one.” And Mike Matusow considers himself “the most unlucky poker player in the world.”

Now it is true that catching hot cards at the right moment and avoiding the brutal bad beats play a critical role in the short run. Otherwise, the World Series of Poker winners would never include unknowns like Jamie Gold last year. However, over time, the cards always even out and everyone gets dealt the same number of good hands. What separates the winners from the losers at poker is how skillfully those cards are played. Yet the problem for many players is that they are unrealistic about their own ability and think it is only bad beats that keep them from the recognition they deserve (and the titles they should have won).

Winning and whining
The consensus of gambling experts is that dwelling on your bad beats prevents you from playing your best game. There are notable exceptions—Phil Hellmuth talks trash, complains often, whines like a French Bordeaux, yet still ranks in the upper echelon of poker and is a consistent winner. However, for every legitimate superstar like Hellmuth, thousands of other players erroneously believe the only thing keeping them from being the world champion is bad luck.

However, gambling has a funny way of playing with your memory. As a result, many players develop a victim’s mentality by minimizing their good fortune and focusing on the times they were unlucky. This skewers their perspective, fueling a belief that life has dealt them the short end of the stick, and they become unrealistic about their own poker prowess.

The problem
One of the greatest feelings in poker is when you have the absolute nuts on the river and another player moves all-in. You just can’t lose! Unfortunately most hands have a high degree of risk. It’s surprising how often you can get busted even with powerhouse starting cards like pocket aces. And many times the bad beat you received wasn’t all that unlikely. Here are a few examples with the following scenario: you are short-stacked in a tournament and go all-in against a player who has a tower of chips higher than the Empire State Building.

A: You look down at your cards and find the Weapons of Mass Destruction—two black aces. Short-stacked, you decide not to slowplay and go all-in. The chip leader, an aggressive maniac who makes Gus Hansen look like a timid Girl Scout, calls with just the 8-7 of diamonds. How big a favorite are you to win this hand? And what is your likelihood of surviving if this same scenario takes place three hands in a row?

B: This time you’re dealt big slick (A-K) in the small blind and a wild player in the big blind raises you all-in. Since you know he loves to bluff, you quickly call. He meekly turns out the worst possible poker hand—2-7 off suit—and your spirits soar. You feel like you’re a near lock to double up. What are your actual odds of winning here and what would be your chances of winning this same hand twice in a row?

C: Once again you are dealt two aces, this time both red. However, before it is your turn to act four players in front of you go all-in. Though astonished, you still make the automatic call. Amazingly, the other hands are a pair of red tens, two red jacks, two red queens, and two red kings.

You quickly become elated as you realize there is zero chance a fluky flush can beat you and almost no possibility of someone hitting a lucky straight. What are your odds of winning this hand?

The Solution
Question A: The chance of you winning this hand is about 77 percent, which still means you will lose almost one out of every four hands. And if you went all-in with this same match-up three times in a row, your chance of still being alive in the tournament drops down to 45 percent! That means that more than half the time you will have been eliminated even though you started with the best possible hand in poker.

Question B: Despite the apparent mismatch of this hand, you are still only about a 2-1 favorite to win. And if the same situation occurred twice in a row, you would only have about a 44 percent chance of still being in the tournament.

Question C: Even in this dominating position, you will lose over half the time as the chance of your aces surviving against these four players is only 45%. So even with a big hand, don’t be too surprised when you receive bad beats. Over the course of a long tournament, you’re often sent to the rail on a monster hand where you were a big favorite.

Lessons Learned
I believe there is a certain mentality and discipline required to becoming a successful gambler (Alan Cunningham and John Juanda are two good examples). Great players rarely blame someone else for sending them home early from a tourney and see no value in dwelling on bad beats. Instead of moping over bad luck, the best pros shift attention to their own play and make sure to tighten up any potential leaks in their game.

The next time some yahoo at the table delivers a bad beat to you, just remember Howard Lederer’s advice—over time you will make money if you have the best hand when you push in your chips. So instead of cursing your opponent for outdrawing you, just be happy there are still players out there who are willing to call an all-in bet with just 8-7 against your pocket rockets.

Keeping your emotions in check during the heat of battle is critical to success at the poker tables. One of the players I admire most is two-time WPT champ Howard Lederer. He maintains a steady keel even when an apparent winner suddenly becomes a loser. Here are a few tips the “Professor” offers to help you deal with the turn of an unfriendly card.

• Bad beats happen. It wouldn’t be poker otherwise, so I always try to focus on the present and forget about any previous bad beats.

• Good players receive more bad beats than they dish out, because they typically have the best hand when all the money goes into the pot.

• It’s helpful to remember that when someone calls you with a much weaker hand, you made the right play and had positive equity in that situation. In the long run that translates into winning poker—even if you ended up losing that particular hand.

Kevin Blackwood has written three books, including Play Blackjack Like the Pros and Casino Gambling For Dummies. More information about his books can be found at www.KevinBlackwood.com.

In poker, bad beat is a subjective term for a hand in which a player with what appear to be strong cards nevertheless loses. It most often occurs where one player bets the clearly stronger hand and their opponent makes a mathematically poor call that wins with any subequent dealing to complete the hand.

In pure mathematical terms a one-outer can be considered a pure bad beat, however there is no consensus however among poker players as to what else exactly constitutes a bad beat and often players will disagree about whether a particular hand was a bad beat. A few examples are: quads over full house, quads over quads, straight flush over quads, small full house vs. bigger full house or better.

Types of bad beats[edit]

Any hand that looked like a favorite to win can end up losing as more cards are dealt (with the nuts being the exception), but bad beats usually involve one of two not mutually exclusive scenarios:

• The player who wins on a bad beat is rewarded for mathematically unsound play. Calling a bet despite having neither the best hand nor the right pot odds or implied odds to call, then winning anyway, is characteristic of this type of bad beat. It can also involve the inferior hand catching running cards when it requires two cards in a row to come from behind to win the pot. For example, catching cards on both the turn and the river in Texas hold 'em that complete a straight or flush.
• A very strong hand loses to an even stronger one, better known as 'cooler'. This type of beat occurs with some frequency in movies. In the films The Cincinnati Kid and Casino Royale, The Kid and Le Chiffre each lose with a full house to a straight flush. In this situation, it is possible that both players have played their cards well, and avoiding the bad beat could not have been achieved without committing a mistake.

Reacting to bad beats[edit]

A bad beat can be a profound psychological blow, and can easily lead to a player going on tilt. Professional player Phil Hellmuth, among others, is notorious for his pronounced reactions to bad beats. However, suffering a bad beat means that the losing player was 'getting the money in good' and in most instances would win by playing the same hand the same way. Thus, the more stoic poker players accept bad beats as an unpleasant but necessary drawback to a tactic that works the vast majority of the time.

Bad beats online[edit]

In online poker rooms, bad beats often lead to accusations that the random number generator is 'rigged', even though such beats also occur in offline games. Many online poker rooms post statistical data to demonstrate the randomness of the hands generated.^[1] In online poker games players have an opportunity to play in 'bad beat' tables where the player who has the best losing hand receives an accumulated prize pool. An additional amount of rake is taken from each hand to fund the jackpot. The largest online jackpot to date was €1.25 million, hit in July 2011 with €443,000 going to the loser of the hand.^[2]

Players are statistically more likely to experience bad beats online, since playing using a computer allows for more hands played per hour. Also, online players may play multiple cash game tables and/or tournaments at the same time, also increasing the frequency of hands dealt.Also, tells are rendered moot, so players are incapable of reading clues such as body language in aid of deriving the strength of an opponent's hand.Finally, online poker games (especially freeroll tournaments) are far more accessible to the average player who, being average, is less likely to be knowledgeable regarding the techniques of the game, in turn making it more likely they will bet from the gut or intuition rather than experience.

Bad beat jackpot[edit]

A bad beat jackpot is a prize that is paid when a sufficiently strong hand is shown down and loses to an even stronger hand held by another player.^[3] Not all poker games offer bad beat jackpots, and those that do have specific requirements for how strong a losing hand must be to qualify for the jackpot. For example, the losing hand may be required to be four-of-a-kind or better. There may be additional requirements as well. For example, in Texas hold 'em there is usually a requirement that both hole cards play in both the losing and winning hands, or that where a full house is the minimum (usually aces full of jacks or higher), both hole cards must be used to make the three-of-a-kind in the full house.

Gambling Bad Beats Against

Bad beat jackpots are usually progressive, often with a small rake being taken out of each pot to fund the jackpot (in addition to the regular rake). When a jackpot is won, it is usually split among all players sitting at the table at the time of the bad beat with the losing hand getting the largest share, followed by the winning hand, and all the other players dividing the remainder. Generally, only the best losing hand is eligible to win the largest share, even if another hand would also qualify.

Worst Gambling Bad Beats

Specific rules, collections, payout percentages, and amounts vary greatly from one casino or cardroom to the next, and are sometimes changed.

See also[edit]

Gambling Bad Beats Good

Notes[edit]

1. ^PokerStars: Random Number Generator Audits
2. ^Boss Media's Bad Beat Jackpot is Finally Hit
3. ^'Commerce Casino: Jackpots'. Archived from the original on 2006-08-20. Retrieved 2006-08-20.

Books[edit]

• Bad Beats and Lucky Draws by Phil Hellmuth ISBN0-06-074083-3
• Poker: Bets, Bluffs, And Bad Beats by A. Alvarez ISBN0-8118-4627-X