How To Play Poker For Beginners Lesson In Bad Beats

Here is a fact that may startle you, it's a fact that without bad beats no money or free online poker tournaments can finish. This may sound like nonsense at face value, after all, for example, at the preflop stage isn't it the case that A-K will beat callers with A-Q? And should not players who move all in with paired 8-8 win against callers with A-K? And what about A-A, if you have pocket rockets isn't that a dead cert anti bad beat guard preflop?

Sadly not so! The 100% faith we have in these hands does not turn out to be 100% at all.

First, we will make a hypothetical poker tournament where players who move all-in preflop will decide their hands preflop.

Thus A-K is beat against 2-2, there and then preflop. A-K beats A-Q. And A-A beats everything.

Do you see how many callers there'll be?

Callers will need to await premium hands before calling, which will prolong the poker tournament.

Bad beats are some of the anomalies present in a poker tournament to shorten it.

a) Going back to out 100% faith in A-K against A-Q, our faith shouldn't be 100% anymore.
b) It should be 75% only, because A-K is beat by A-Q the remaining 25% of times.
c) And with the amount of players who move all-in with A-K, a caller with A-x should win 25% of times.
d) If 50 players in the tournament move all-in with A-K and 50 callers call with Ace-lower, isn't it expected that 1/4 of 50, or about 13 players, should get eliminated?

On pocket pairs against A-K, it is almost a coin flip.

a) It can be decided approximately by simply flipping an actual coin.
b) Ultimately, pocket pairs win, however, as a result of a slight edge.
c) But it doesn't mean that 8-8 will invariably win against A-K.
d) If 8-8 winning against A-K is an approximately 55-to-45 (or 11-to-9) favorite, then there are almost as many players winning an all-in with a small pair against two overcards as players bumped out in the tournament in the same situation.
e) The bumped out players shouldn't fret; it's the laws of probability that are hanging.

Whenever a player wants to avoid bad beats, of course that player will wait for premium hands. But waiting for premium hands will substantially diminish the player's stack because of blinding out.

That player should move all-in, at some time, or else suffer the oblivion of blinding out. But moving all-in doesn't promise a double-up; it's really a means of seeking to restore your stack to a more comfortable level. Bad beats are around every corner.

Here is a last note: Bad beats exist not just preflop, but also postflop.

a) Say Player X has 8-8 and Player Y has 7-6 in a board of 5-8-4-A.
b) Player X flopped a Set but Player Y hits a Straight.
c) If Player Y moves all-in and X calls, then Y's win isn't assured yet.
d) X can still pair the Board for a Full House or Quads.
e) And if X does pair the board, we can refer to it as a bad beat.

And whatever their stack sizes are. Both players could be above chip average, with Y having less chips than X. So bad beats are ways to ensure speedy tournaments by eliminating anybody, short-stack or players at the top of the pack.

Hopefully this was thought provoking. The base message being that you ought to not assume that particular cards will always win, that's simply not possible. Plus bad beats actually are not bad luck, it is just that you have been picked out by the laws of probability to have a bad beat!

With that said, look at some of the examples above. You simply can't avoid bad beats but by comprehending probability in poker you can lessen your risk and exposure to them by either folding certain types of hand more regularly, not going all-in or betting less to ensure that if it does go bad you do not get taken out 100%.

But at the end of the day the only way to avoid bad beats 100% is just not to play poker! So hopefully when they come your bad beat games are on free online poker tables as opposed to in mortgage sized WSOP games!

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