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I had my first real experience of bad beats a week or so ago, to be honest it was horrific. Looking back I think that most of the money I lost was not directly due to the bad beats, but the knock on effects. I have not read much about the 'knock-on' effects. The bad beats were only indirectly responsible. One thing for sure though, all the money I lost was down to me and me alone!

So for all those that have never had any bad beats, beware, its only a matter of time, and those that have, rest assured that you are not alone!!

Anyway here is my story of my first bad beat. It all started about two weeks ago. I am from England, only play no-limit. Up to then everything was going great, I have not been playing long and have only played on-line. I was winning good money on a regular basis and slowly moving up the stakes ladder. Then it happened. I was playing a 10 player ring game. I caught a good flop and there was plenty of money in the pot.

At this juncture my girlfriend joined me and started chatting to me. The hand had become heads-up, and I was certain I had my opponent beat. The best he could do was a king flush if he caught on the river, but I had the ace of spades, the nut flush! The river came giving him the king flush, he went all-in I called, 'well' I said to my girlfriend 'I got the nut flush 'nice little earner' poor guy, he should not mess with me'. Since she had joined me I was giving her a commentary of what was happening, I guess I was showing off or something like that.

Anyway after the show down, all the money went to my opponent! What's happened? I have the nut flush I should win!. Unfortunately, for me the community cards were all black and I had miss read them, I only had a four flush…with the ace though!! From then on for about 9 sessions over three day's I barely won a hand that had more than the blinds in it. You might be thinking that I went on 'tilt', but that's not really the case, I can not be absolutely sure that I didn't at some time, if I did it would have been only for a few hands.

Anyway,I was constantly drowning in the river big time. If I had trips someone had bigger, if I had two pair they had trips, if I had straight they hit the flush, I even had a full house that went down to quads twice! There were several times that I had the nut hand on the turn, so no matter what happened on the river I could not lose. Guess what happened? Yep shared pot!! Now even though I was having bad beats I was still playing good ( a relative term I know ) poker at least for the first two days and surprisingly my losses were not as bad as you might think, but they were big enough!! I knew about bad beats, well read about them anyway! But to be honest, it was only after the bad beats ended that I really started to lose money. During the first two days of the bad beats I am sure I was still fine mentally. But something happened during the third day I am not sure when or how but it did.

Perhaps it's like the boxer who is 'punch drunk'. I started to play poor poker, then I graduated to really poor poker then I became a charity! This lasted fortunately only for four days. Lost a lot of money, about 90% of what I had won. Looking back my bad beat period only lasted a couple of days but my poor play lasted twice as long and cost me four times as much ( inverse square law! ).

The point I am trying to make is that bad beats are as much a part of poker as anything else, they come with the territory, but what you must not do is let it affect you subsequent play, it will cost you your shirt, if not your whole wardrobe! I guess it was a crisis of confidence, I became too scared to raise and saw ghosts everywhere. Basically if I didn't have the nuts I would at best call and if anyone raised I would fold. I was expecting bad beats all the time.

This is a sure way to lose a steady stream of cash. I wouldn't raise pre flop when I should, then when I got out flopped with against Q7 off-suit I would assume it was a bad beat. No,no it wasn't, it was just bad poker! Basically, I allowed a few bad beats (expensive ones I'll admit) to completely alter my style of poker, I went from champ to chump, from hero to a zero. The bad beats only lasted a few sessions, but I allowed it to effect my game at least twice as long. I am happy to say that I am well on the road to recovery and have recouped nearly all my losses. The strange thing is that I now feel a much stronger player than I was before, much stronger, got a few battle scars now, the first of many I am sure!

The funny thing about how everything started to even out and my manic deranged state of mind re-normalising, seemed like a bad beat at the time. I had had enough of cash games and giving people chunks of my hard-earned cash, so I decided to play a 'sit and go' tourney. So I joined a $5 by-in, at least this way I could play for an hour or so and only lose five bucks. I had been playing so badly, that only losing $5 an hour would be a moral victory! Anyway it was a 10 player ring game, I got the big blind, great start I thought!

Then it got worse, I realised I had joined a limit tourney. Hardly ever played limit before. I discovered I knew a lot more expletives than I though I knew, just as well I didn't have a dog. Anyway I made the necessary mental adjustments which included a quick memory re-call of Skolanki. I think Skolanki is much more useful in limit than no-limit, digressing slightly Skolanski is positively dangerous in no-limit…but that's another story! To my surprise I won the tourney in about 45 minutes! Beginners luck probably! Yeah I was on the road to recovery.

I mentioned earlier that I wasn't on tilt during the 'dark ages', but perhaps that raises an interesting point. We all know what is generally accepted as tilt ie basically grossly over betting hands either pre or post flop, due to emotional problems because of previous hands, usually as a result of perceived bad beats ( I am sure there is a more erudite was of defining it!!) . Since, I did the exact opposite ie grossly under betting, easily knocked off the pot, in short scared of my own shadow, then perhaps this is a form of tilt but diametrically opposite to the normally accepted version of tilt?

I know I am a newbie to hold'em, but I have never read anything about this kind of tilt, perhaps its been miss-diagnosed? Thus I would like to offer the term 'anti-tilt' as the following:

'grossly under betting hands either pre or post flop, due to emotional problems because of previous hands, usually as a result of perceived bad beats'

What do you think? How did you cope with your first bad beats? Did it make you stronger? Did you have a crisis of confidence? LOL Frank

Answer: This is a good question because it brings up the subject of why most people never make it in poker. It is really hard to play poker well over a long period of time -- day in and day out. It isn't hard to play once in a while when the cards are going your way but it is very hard to maintain your strategy when you've been playing correctly and still losing day-after-day.

I'm amazed by the Doyle Brunsons who have played winning poker for decades. It takes a certain type of person, a certain attitude and a confidence in the game. If anyone of those is missing, you won't make it. Let me be the first one to tell you that playing poker professionally isn't easy and much of the time it isn't fun. In other professions if you do well you are guaranteed to win -- in poker you can do everything right and have some nit wit who does everything wrong beat you.

Even though we all realize that this is part of the game and the reason there is a game, it doesn't bring much relief when you are in a down swing. In poker there are always a lot of factors to a win or loss. It is this ever changing sea of variables that makes it hard to anchor yourself. This can be especially true if you are moving up in stakes.

Often times you'll go on a big losing streak before you adjust to the new level of play. That can result in you losing your bankroll or you changing your style to one that doesn't work, which is the more dangerous of the two. You need to look at your game closely if you lose a lot but at the sametime you can't constantly change the style. This is the beauty and fatal flaw of poker: anything works some of the time but the problem is that you're results have to succeed in the long term.

So my first piece of advice is to not change your style of play if it has worked for a while before. Realize that you will have swings and to come out of a swing you'll need to maintain. And if I were you I would stick to just tight basic poker and then branch off from there instead of the other way around. Consider adjusting your play when you have a nice fat bankroll to cushion some of the experiments.

Next, you mentioned the topic of anti-tilt. We call that scared poker, where every hand you are afraid of losing. This is a self-fulfilling prophesy. You can't win like this because everytime you lose a hand you pay the maximum and then when you win a hand you make the minimum. The best poker players in the world aren't afraid to lose -- they are optimists.

So the last piece of advice I can give you is to take the philosophy that you aren't going to roll over and die. Until the last chip you are going to fight and the other players are going to have to take your money, you aren't going to just give it to them. You aren't playing to survive them, you're playing to beat them. Bad beat me every hand but if I'm going down, I'm going down swinging.

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