Everyone is familiar with bad beats, and many of you always share your bad beats. However, the reason I am writing this article is that too often I see players go on unnecessary tilt due to a few bad beats, especially in live tournaments.

And sometimes they aren’t even bad beats! So when you do run into a nasty beat, hopefully after reading this article, you’ll take the hit inside and just give your opponent a smile and hope that he’ll continue making the same mistakes.

We all know what a bad beat is (it is when a player holding a hand which at one point is a statistical favorite over his opponent(s), but subsequently loses on a later street), however there are various ways for a player to end up losing their chips to a dreadful suck-out by the opponent

1.Your opponent made all the wrong decisions he could possibly make and got there somehow, and takes down the pot (i.e. chasing draws for ridiculous prices, or shoving an enormous stack with air and making a runner-runner straight against your set).

2.You played poorly on one or several streets which gave your opponent(s) cheap or free cards that eventually sucked out on you and made you pay dearly for your mistakes on the river (i.e. You min. check raise flop with set, then check turn trying to be deceptive).

3.You had the best hand; you played the hand perfectly, while your opponent is also mathematically making the correct decisions. Although your opponent was behind at one point, you both played it right and he got lucky and won the pot (i.e. Your opponent calls his last $100 with Ah5h on the flop of 6h7hTc after you shoved, and 2 others called)

So if you are someone that gets hot headed easily and find yourself tilting or cussing at others after a bad beat, this is my advice for you. The next time you experience a bad beat, try to figure out which of the three scenarios you belong to. If your opponent played poorly, I’d smile at him/her and just hope that he/she stays on the table for the whole night. Now if you were to run through the hand again, and realized that you made a few mistakes along the way, then all you can do is analyze your play and learn from these mistakes. Lastly, if you concluded that the both of you played the hand correctly, then do not hold grudges against this player and try to go after him, this will most like lead to further mistakes on your part. Just remember to always keep yourself level minded and continue making good decisions.

There’s the common saying, if bad players cannot get lucky and win big, then there won’t be any bad players. So what I personally find most irritating is when players start abusing others that had given them a bad beat. I mean come on… who has never given another player a bad beat? These ‘calling stations’, ‘donkeys’, and ‘fish’ are the people who generally feed the better players (yourself Maybe?). Then there are some players who HATES bad beats so much that they over protect there strong hands and lose out on a lot of value. This is very bad as you are minimizing losses at the cost of potential profits.