They say that at the top level all the poker players have almost equal poker playing skills but what separates the absolute best from the very good players is the mindset and attitude to poker that the best players have for losing and bad beats. I would take this even further and say that if you don’t have the right mindset and attitude when it comes to those things you will have very hard time even becoming a winning poker play at the first place. In this article we will look into how winning players approach the bad times in poker and how you should feel about bad beats and the losing streaks that will happens sooner or later. Hopefully you find the information helpful and it helps you in becoming a better poker player.
1) Dealing with the bad beats
The first thing you need to learn as poker player is how to deal with the bad beats. After all if you don’t play extremely short sessions or if you are not the luckiest poker player on earth you will get bad beats in pretty much every session that you play. And if you have the wrong attitude to bad beats and go on tilt after them you will soon notice that your poker bankroll is gone and you are wondering what the hell went wrong.
So what should you feel when you get the nasty setup or lose to a sick bad beat? Answer: Absolutely nothing. It was just another hand of poker. It doesn’t have a major impact on your life (or if it does you were most likely playing too big game) and the life goes on. Majority of the time you would have won the pot but this was one of the rare times that you didn’t. Remember that when you are 80% favourite you still lose the pot 20% of the time, or in other words for every four times you win the pot you will end up losing it 1 time. The most important thing when facing a bad beat is to simply ignore it, keep playing your A game and if you cant do that for some reason simply get up from the table and come back when you are ready to play your A game again. The game isn’t going anywhere and you will most likely thank yourself later.
To summarize the above in few words: DON’T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT BAD BEATS.
2) Dealing with long losing streaks
Compared to the long losing streaks the bad beats really are walk in the park. They say that in the end every poker player will run worse than they thought was ever possible. And yes that is almost certainly true. Those are the type of runs that separate the best players from those who will never reach the absolute top of the poker world.
So let’s you are in middle of 2 months long losing streak during which nothing seems to work, how should you deal with it?
First thing you need to do is look back if you actually ever were a winning player in the game that you were playing. For an example if you just moved up to $2/$4 no limit games and won money for two weeks it doesn’t mean that you ever actually were a winning player in the $2/$4 games – and instead it is more likely that you were just running hot for two weeks and now for the last two months the luck has evened out and it turns out you never were a winning player in those games. If that’s the case simply move down to tables from which you have more evidence that you are a winning player in.
If the evidence points that you actually were a long term winning player in the games that you have now been losing in for two months it is time to look if something has changed. Because the truth is most of the time it is your own game that has changed go through the hands you have played and see if you developed some leaks or sub-optimal habits that are hurting your winrate. If you come to the conclusion that your own game is fine it is next time to look at the way your opponents are playing. Try to find out if you are opponents have somehow improved, if the games you are playing has now much less bad players or if your opponents have figured your tendencies and have a better idea about how to read your hands than they did in the past. If the games you are playing appear to be the same they used to be and if your opponents appear to be playing as good or bad as they used to be there are only two things left that can constitute to your losing streak: either there is cheating going or you honestly are simply running incredible bad.
The first option is obviously rather unlikely, but if you suspect it is a possibility do some research and find out what other poker players playing at the same place as you do think. In the more likely case that you simply are running incredible bad there in all honesty isn’t that much that you can do. You can’t change the way the cards falls, so simply make sure you are playing your best game and that you have enough money in your bankroll so that you never risk losing your poker moneys.
If you start feeling like your game is falling apart or your poker bankroll is shrinking too much drop down to a level where you feel like you have a huge edge over the other players and where the possible losses won’t do so much damage to your poker roll.
Having a good rakeback deal and getting valuable first deposit bonus can also be a good idea during the bad times. They will boost your bankroll when the times are though. With the code NOIQ777 you get a 30% rakeback and big first deposit bonus at NoiQpoker.
