The Frustrating Levels of Losing Poker

The say hitting a baseball is the toughest thing to do in sports. I’m sure we’ve all heard the old line about “where else are you considered a success if you fail 7 out of 10 times at something?” Well, winning consistently at poker might not be as hard as hitting a baseball but it similar in one respect; any player, even the very best, will lose more often than they win. That’s just the way it goes.

Take the case of someone, like me, who plays primarily single table tournaments online. In these types of tournaments, where you’ve got 10 players and the top three spots pay, a good player can expect to finish in the money somewhere between 40 and 50% of the time. That’s it. If you don’t believe me you can research it on a poker forum like www.twoplustwo.com. Trust me. Even a consistent, winning player at those levels is still missing the money, still losing, around 60% of the time.

So if you’re going to play a lot of poker you better get used to losing. It’s gonna happen. And not only is losing going to happen, it’s going to happen in all different kinds of ways. Over the course of thousands of games in the last few years I’ve certainly seen my share, some more frustrating than others. Here, below, are some of the more common types of losing you’ll encounter on your poker journey with rankings, based on how annoying they are, to advice for how to handle them. And you certainly better learn how to handle them.

1) Getting Outplayed. I don’t care how good you are, there are times when you’re going to get just flat outplayed at a poker table. Whether it’s for one key pot or entire session, there is absolutely going to be times when you get your ass handed to you by someone. Anyone that tells you otherwise is lying. Now, if this kind of thing is happening a lot, obviously, you’ve got a big problem. You can’t continue to play poker, at least not without lowering the stakes, if you’re getting consistently outfoxed.

But getting outplayed from time to time, so long as it’s not a chronic problem, is probably the least frustrating way to lose. At least for me. Because the thing about being outplayed, unlike having someone put a massive bad beat on you, is that there’s something to learn from the experience. Daniel Negreanu, who’s only about the best poker player in the world at the moment, says the day you stop learning and improving your game is the day you’re in trouble. It’s always humbling to walk into a trap or have someone call your bluff or what have you. But when that stuff happens, and it will, try to learn from it. Think about the way you played, ask yourself what you could have done differently, and try to be better for it the next time a similar situation comes up.

Frustration level (on a scale of 1 to 5): 1 star

2) Losing a lot of coin flips. If you play a lot of tournament poker, whether it’s single table or multi, you’re going to find yourself in countless coin flip situations. You push a short stack all in before the flop with pocket 8s and get called by KQ suited. You’ve got yourself a coin flip. It’s completely inevitable. They happen again and again and again in tournament poker. And if you play enough I think you’ll find that it definitely balances itself out over time. Nobody has chronic good luck or bad luck flipping coins.

But what’s definitely going to happen over the course of say, a thousand of these types of hands, it’s that you will hit a stretch where you lose 8 or 10 or 15 in a row. Every poker book or message board I’ve ever read will tell you this is 100% normal. The long term will always make statistical sense. The short term carries a lot of variance. Problem is, that doesn’t make it any less frustrating when the bad streaks come. It never becomes less amazing that you can lose so many coin flips in a row. You feel like the unluckiest s.o.b. on the planet. So what can you do about it? Well, for one thing, always try to keep the big picture in mind. Understand that what you are seeing, however astounding it might seem, is very common. It evens out. And, if you still think the poker gods have it out for you or something try keeping track of it for a month or so. I’ve done it a few times and, you know what, if I keep track of it for any reasonable length of time, sure enough, it comes out around 50/50.

Frustration level: 2 stars

3)Cold Cards/Getting Blinded Off. This is pretty straight-forward I suppose but you can’t discount that there are going to be times when the cards just run bad on you. Simple as that. It’s not unusual at all to sit in a game for an hour and not catch more than one or two even semi-playable hands. It happens and it sucks. You feel like you’re not even part of the game. What can you do when you catch a cold streak of cards? Well, there’s not much to be honest. Certainly, you’re going to have a take a stand at some point. You can’t let yourself sit there and get blinded to death. But, at the same time, you can’t allow yourself to get too undisciplined. Take your shots but take your medicine too. It’s easy to lose your patience and discipline in poker and that can spell disaster. Don’t let it happen to you.

Frustration level: 3 stars

4)Second best syndrome. Now we’re getting into really frustrating ways to lose. Second best syndrome, for lack of a better term, is the phenomenon that occurs when you continue to run into monster hands. This is the kind of thing where you flop a full house and another guy flops quads. You pick up pocket kings and someone else has pocket aces. You flop top two pair, they flop trips. It’s like the poker gods have rigged it so every time you bet, no matter how strong your own hand is, you run into the nuts. For the most part you can chock a string of this up to plain old bad luck. As Doyle Brunson says sometimes there’s nothing magical you can do. Sometimes you just have to pay the man off. But it’s still frustrating as hell. So how do you deal with it? Well, I think you always need to ask yourself if there was any possible way to save money with those second-best hands. At times there’s a lesson to be learned. But if the answer is no, that there was nothing at all you could have reasonably done in the hand, then let it go. Sometimes you just have to pay the man off. It goes with the territory.

Frustration level: 4 stars

5)Bad beats and/or bad play. Now we’re talking about the stuff that can be truly infuriating. Players keep drawing at you and they keep on making their hands. You go all-in with pocket 10s against pocket 4s and the guy flops a set on you. You get all the money in with the best hand on the turn and the guy pulls a miracle card on you at the river. Bad beats take on all shapes and sizes and can test the patience of any poker player. No matter how good I might feel about getting my money into the pot as a 90% favorite, that never seems to make me feel any better when my opponent spikes an ungodly river card on me to catch an inside straight.

Especially if they had no business being in the hand in the first place. That’s what really drives me nuts. Some short stack goes all-in on me with AJ and I happen to get unlucky with AQ? Well, it sucks but at least you can understand why they were in there. But if someone decides to call your big pre-flop raise with 7-4 offsuit and then call you down to the river and backdoors two pair on you or something? Absolutely infuriating. Sure, you can tell yourself; these are the types of people you want to play in the long run. People who play that way, no matter how lucky they might be in the short run, always lose out in the end. But that’s often of little consolation when they’re raking in your chips.

Frustration level: 5 stars

Questions? Comments? Send feedback to Michael James at feedback@barstoolsports.com