Bad beat

Online Poker

Bad beat

In p oker, a bad beat occurs when a hand, which was at one time a big favourite to win, loses. Typically the term is only applied in this way when the player holding the eventual winning hand misplayed it spectacularly.

Alternatively, the term is also applied when a particularly strong hand loses to an even stronger one. In some casinos there is a "bad beat jackpot" awarded whenever a player suffers a particular beat; for example, having four-of-a-kind beaten.

Example

An (extreme) example of the first type of bad beat, in no-limit Texas Hold'em:

Alice (the hero) holds A♦ A♣ - pocket aces, the strongest possible starting hand.
Bob (the villain) holds Q♣ 8♥ - a weak hand.

The players have the same amount of chips. Before the flop, Alice raises to 15 times the big blind, placing a fifth of her stack in the pot, and only Bob calls. The flop comes A♥ 8♠ 7♠. Although Alice has the nuts at this point, making 3 aces, she is concerned about possible draws to a straight or flush, and goes all-in with a bet that is twice the size of the pot. Bizarrely, Bob, who has only middle-pair, calls.

At this point, Bob's chances of winning are precisely 1 in 990. [1] He can only win if both the turn card and the river card are eights. Since this is a bad beat story, the turn and river naturally bring precisely that, and Bob scoops the pot, leaving Alice cursing Bob's appalling play - he should not have called such a big bet before the flop, nor on the flop.

Reacting to bad beats

Some players react badly when given a bad beat - professional player Phil Hellmuth is notorious for this - but others take the more stoic view that a player such as Bob in the above example is playing exactly how they would wish him to play - he is essentially trying to give away money, though he failed on that one occasion. But in the long run, Bob's reckless playing style will cost him much more than he will win, to the eventual benefit of his opponents.

Nevertheless, such a beat is often a profound psychological blow, and can easily lead to a player going on tilt.

In online poker rooms, bad beats often lead to accusations that the random number generator is "rigged", even though such beats occur in offline games.

External link

How To Write Bad Beat Stories - a humourous take on bad beat stories.