Find Out More Information About the Reason for Losing in Poker
A losing poker player, or even a good player in the throes of some particularly bad luck, will blame anyone or anything. His opponents are chasing morons who keep getting lucky (that has a familiar ring, huh?). Someone must be marking the deck, peeking at his hole cards or otherwise cheating him (this mindset, coupled with a liberal sprinkling of alcohol, is one of the main reasons why casinos need security personnel). The cocktail waitress is too slow. The floorman calls for too many “fills” of the chip rack, so the beloved hands-per-hour statistic is dropping. If it’s a sunny day and he’s near a window, it’s God’s fault (ditto if it’s raining or snowing).
And then of course, when all else fails, there’s always the dealer. The person who keeps flinging those crappy cards in his direction MUST be doing it on purpose. Never mind that there are hundreds of “eyes in the sky”, that the dealer has no stake in seeing any particular player win or that many casinos today use mechanical shufflers. The loser is convinced that his poor performance is the dealer’s fault and it’s no use trying to discuss any logic with him. Logic only works on calm, sensible people, and a poker player in the midst of a losing streak bears no resemblance to either one.
Sometimes the blame takes a supernatural turn. The player realizes that it is ridiculous to imply that the dealer is deliberately giving him “silver-medal” or worse cards, so he falls back on voodoo.
No, ladies and germs, it’s definitely NOT the dealer. And while bad luck does happen, usually the blame is properly placed right between the loser’s eyes. If he’s playing online, that’s usually easy enough to verify if he’ll order a history of his last 100 or 200 hands.
1. At most, you’ll flop a flush with two suited cards once every 113 hands, assuming that no one else has been dealt a card of that suit (a very unlikely proposition). And when you DO flop it, how confident will you be that your 9-high flush will hold? More often, you’ll flop a flush draw and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that you won’t win much playing that way.
“But,” the loser retorts, “the flush wasn’t my only way to win.” Well, I sit corrected. He did have a 0.3% chance of flopping two pairs and a 0.2% chance of flopping trips (again assuming no one else had been dealt a 9 or a 4). Not that either hand would even be the nuts necessarily, but… my bad.
2. Chasing bad straight draws. When you’re losing, you almost always have a string of near-misses. For example, you have 87 suited, see a flop cheaply and it’s T 7 6. You don’t have a flush draw, but you have middle pair, bad kicker, and a gutshot straight draw. A good player can fold this hand to anything other than a tiny bet, but a bad player (or one who’s just playing badly) will call on that flop, call again on a no-help turn like a 2 (or even worse, a J, 7, or 6), and then moan after the session about how he “couldn’t hit any draws.”
3. Another bleeder is the bad-kicker hand. Any regular reader of my sometimes lame articles knows how much I detest ace-rag*, but how many times have you heard this loser’s lament? Correction, Charlie, you didn’t even have to see the flop. When you have A3, for example, and the flop contains an ace and no 3, there’s a good chance you’re drawing dead or on life-support. I don’t understand the aversion to throwing A-rag away preflop. It’s not a good hand and even worse, it can cost you lots of money. Remember that when you are playing cards of two different ranks, most of the time it’s better to pair your lower card, as long as that’s the top or middle card in the flop. For example, you have K8. Wouldn’t you rather see an 8 5 3 flop than a K 5 3?
The lower your bottom card, the less chance it has of giving you top pair or even middle pair on the flop. What are you hoping to see with A3? Are you hoping to see a 3 2 2 flop?
4. A fourth category of contributors to “one of those days” is the pocket pair that’s an underpair to the flop. Sure, your TT started with some promise, and you properly raised to try to get the fools to release their precious A-rag and K-rag hands, but then that damn dealer — the one who never deals you a winner – had to go and spread that Q J 7 flop. Sure, you MIGHT still be in the lead. That bettor in early position and the caller before you MIGHT be on draws or just bluffing.
Read about free five card poker, online poker sign up bonus matters and Governor Poker download issues.