Shorthanded Homegame Badbeats...

[henrikrh]

First post ever... been reading 2plus2 for ages to improve my game... finally i've had a session of poker so bad I had to post. I play with 9 or so people ussually 5 of us at any time in a microlimit very soft social game. We were playing limit and every bought in for the equivilent of 3US dollars, almost nothing, but we still play like it's alot.

Couple of hands in I have AJ and flop two pair, I stuff the pot till I'm all in, the only caller holds bottom pair, 6s I think, very soft game as I said, though he thought I was bluffing I assume. Turn. River. Blank. Six. Trips and I'm beat. No problem, one bad beat, I buy in again for the same.

Some hands later, pocket aces, wishing it wasn't limit. My opponent has AJ, by the flop i manage to get him all in, there were a few raises and reraises preflop, QJ6 was the flop. Now that we are all in, the turn... Jack. Painful.

Later the same thing happens with over pair queens, someone else hits trips on the river.

We played limit until I had bought in 4 times and then a few NL tourneys when more people came. In 5 hours of poker I was bad beated atleast 8 times. The only thing I have left is pride that I took the beats well, and roughly $120 I've taken these guys for over the past month or two.

Just thought I'd share the story, what do you guys do when you get a cold streak like this?

IMO getting good starting cards that lose is worse than getting bad starting cards, you lose more money.

[deception5]

Whenever this happens I think of an exhibit in the Boston Museum of Science (at least it was there about 15 years ago!). It's in the mathematics section and the basic setup is a gigantic pegboard with steel balls falling down constantly finding their way through it finally coming to rest into one of about 20 compartments. On the front of the exhibit is a bell curve drawn in red.

The balls fall all day long accumulating in each compartment but if you stop by at the appropriate time you will see that every day the balls line up almost exactly with the bell curve.

Whenever I lose like this I remember the hands where my tpgk was way behind on the flop to someones slowplayed aces and I ended up hitting 2 pair or better on the river.

It does suck though when it's with your best starting hands. You start to feel like "ok time to lose a lot of money!" when they are dealt. Probably the hardest thing to do is put in a big raise preflop when you get good cards the very next hand.

Just remember you got your money in as a huge favorite. That's the best you can do... the rest will work itself out.