By Sam O'Connor
Winners renowned and celebrated look upon bad beats as working FOR them! Yet every now and then someone will tell me he is losing, not because of his play, but because of bad beats. And his stories will hold all the depth and mystery of the deuce of clubs.
A “bad beat” by definition occurs at the moment the longest odds of making a hand win an inordinately large pot – against us. (If the long odds win FOR us, then we simply played well.)
The great players do not look upon bad beats as the devil at work or the poker gods favoring someone else. In fact, the great poker players’ devotion to the entire game explains it all. Bad beats are part of the benefits of the game.
You see, all great players (which are not necessarily just the famous players) have an understanding of the game that the ordinary player doesn’t have. (How else could they be great?) The great players know the full vision of the game includes bad beats and the greats know they win because the bad beats help them win. They know it, not just because of the mathematics of probability, but because they have the records to show it. No, not the records they have ready for the tax collector, silly, the other ones - the happy records.
[Continued on The Pokerkeep]
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