Overcoming bad beats (part I)
We all know about bad beats. But why exactly are they so difficult for us to deal with? Perhaps the answer lies in our “expectation.”
The Zen-Buddhist will tell you that expectations produce a negative effect. For instance, he separates happiness from pleasure. He describes happiness as something that comes from within. And that if you expect pleasure in order for you to be happy during the day, then some days you will be happy and some days you will not be. If you look inside yourself for happiness, then a person who is satisfied with his or her deeds in this world has the ability to be happy even on the days when pleasures don’t come. It doesn’t mean that you don’t still enjoy the pleasures on the days that are filled with them, but on the days when pleasurable things don’t happen, you are still happy. Notice that while the pleasurable thing actually happening can produce a positive effect, the expectation of it can only produce a negative. In poker, I would describe hapiness as winning long-term, and pleasure as winning in the short-term. Some days you will have pleasure (wins) and some days you won’t, but it is hapiness (long-term winning) that we seek.
It seems to reason that in poker, if we can get rid of the expectation, even to some degree, then we can get rid of some of the frustrations and correlating “tilt” that is produced from bad beats. It will not stop the bad beats themselves, but it can stop you from emotionally calling a raise from the big blind when you shouldn’t or putting all your chips in as a dog because someone “owes” you. It can stop you from breaking your mouse or berating a dealer who has done nothing wrong. And it can help you to feel less frustrated.
For example, you are at the final table of a multi table tournament; 8 players are left. Someone raises and you look down and see AK. You analyze the situation and decide to push all-in. Your opponent calls. More than half your stack is in the pot. If you win the hand, you will be chip leader. If you lose, you will be the smallest stack remaining. Do you expect to win this hand with your AK? If I told you that you lost the hand, would you lose your emotional control? Or would you be able to put it aside and move on to the next hand and make the best decision possible for that hand? Most people would say it depends on what your opponent has. But in truth, is there anything positive to gain (aside from the knowledge of what your opponent may call with) by knowing your opponent’s hole cards, and whether or not you should have expected to win that hand?
Without knowing your opponent’s hole cards, you most likely you wouldn’t go crazy and although you may be somewhat disappointed, you would focus on the next hand and try to play it properly in order to give yourself the best chance to win the tournament. After all, why be upset, your opponent may have beaten you with AA or KK; you never saw the hand, so you don’t know. And AK is at best a coin flip against any pair. While you wouldn’t have been surprised if you had found out you won, you are also not surprised to find out you lost. You really didn’t have much expectation one way or the other when you got called.
But in the real world of poker, instead of simply finding out if you won or lost, there is always drama. Let’s say your opponent flips over AQ. Now your expectations are high. You see chips coming your way. You watch the board flop K44, a perfect flop, and your expectations soar to the potential first place prize money! Then the turn is a Ten, and the river a Jack, giving your opponent a straight. You are devastated, and your expectations of winning have caused this negative effect. Perhaps you are the type to break your mouse, or to berate the dealer in a live game or the other player. Or maybe you keep it inside you and later on start an argument with your girlfriend over something stupid. And more importantly in a poker-sense, you play the next few hands quite irrationally and blow any chance to get back into the tournament.
In part II, I’ll talk about some ideas of how to use this in a more practical sense, but in the meantime what are some of your ideas regarding bad beats or feedback on mine?
By the way, some of this post may sound familiar to the few people who may have read a similar post at my (now basically inactive) Zen-and-Poker blog. Wanting to stay active in the Pokersift community and not having anything interesting in mind to write about this week, this is a re-hash of some thoughts I made in a posting there about 2 years ago.
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A huge component to expectation… is the element of what is at stake. How would you feel if the tournament described above was a freeroll with first place prize of 500 fulltilt points compared to the Stars Sunday Million with first place of $250k.
Monetary investment is positively co-related to emotional investment. Bottomline is money is important.. and more money is MORE important. As long as money is important when we lose it, it effects you. The more at stake, the more it effects you. It would be just like losing your job. It means more to a single mother than it would to a millionaire. Same thing with poker… if you have a big monetary investment you will have a big emotional reaction.
That is part of the reason why the big times pros can sluff off big losses, because they have the bankroll that allows them to look past the short term deviation.