How To Handle Down Swings And Bad Beats In Poker
Those of you who have been playing poker for quite some time now are completely familiar with the fact that bad beats and down swings are part of (online) poker games.
Downswing can be defined as losing quite some amount of money in short period of time due to so called bad beats or cold decks.
With that said, I am pretty certain you have at some point in your poker »career« had or experience a previously defined downswing (if you haven’t then I guess you are quite new to poker).
This is nothing unusal of course, but (as mentioned above) rather something that every poker player can expect to happen (sooner or later). In this post, I am going to give you a couple of ideas about how to deal with downswings and bad beats in poker.
Before I do that, let me quickly give you one or two example of bad beat or cold deck situation.
An Example Of Bad Beat And Downswing In Poker
Imagine that you are holding pocket Aces on the Button (position before Small Blind). Players on the first two positions fold their cards the the player in the early middle position raises four (4) times big blind (standard open raise).
Every body folds and the turn to act comes your way. Naturally, you raise that player making it 10 times big blind. Small blind and big blind both fold and the turn to act gets back to the original raiser.
He thinks for about two (2) seconds and then shoves (goes allin) for the rest of his chips. Of course, you call very quickly (after all, you are holding pocket Aces, which is the best possible preflop hand you can get).
You see that original raisor is holding pocket Fives. You have him on the leash as only two remaining Fives can save him from getting busted.
The dealer spreads the cards and your opponent hits another 5 on the river, which means your pocket Aces just got cracked.
This is an example of so called bad beat or cold deck situation.
Such situations happen quite commonly when playing poker. When you experience several situations like that in short period of time (like 20 times in a week), this can be defined as downswing.
How To Deal With Bad Beats, Cold Decks And Downswings When Playing Poker?
With that said, lets now see what is the best way to deal with such situations.
Below I share a couple of tips or hints that are not necessarily the best way of handling bad beats and downswings, but can be useful if you apply them.
1. Expect Bad Beats And Downswings To Happen
Having bad beats and downswings when playing poker is something you can not and will not avoid in the long run.
Thinking it will not affect you is like sticking your head into the sand in the middle of nowhere and imagining you are on Bahamas. While you certainly can convince yourself that you are indeed on Bahamas, the reality will get you sooner or later.
It is therefore better to expect bad beats and downswings to happen. In such way, you will not look at them as the end of the world, but it will be easier for you to accept them as part of the poker game.
2. Eliminate Emotions From Your Poker Game
The biggest »problem« that players have to face when having a downswing is the emotions.
The fact that you have just lost a full buyin to some idiot who could not fold pocket Fives to your big reraise can be really frustrating, I know!
When this happens, try to deal with it without going nuts. By doing this, you will not only preserve your good mood, but also protect yourself from tilting.
The last thing you want to do is going on tilt and risking additional buyin to get that money back in the next hand.
If you cant stop yourself from being mad, pissed off or whatever you do after experiencing a bad beat, then the best thing you can do is stop playing poker for a while and instead go for a walk, call your girlfriend or whatever.
3. Stay Focused
Again, do not let bad beats and downswings affect the way you play your next hand and the hand after that one.
Instead, you should stay focused and keep playing according to your (hopefully winning) strategy as this is the only way to make money in the poker in the long run.
If your concentration drops, you could potentially lose more money in that session but not due to bad beat but due to bad decisions.
That is all for now from me about how to handle bad beats and downswings in poker.
I will be more than happy to hear it from you:
- How do you handle bad beats and downswings?
- Do you have any other advice regarding this matter?
You can leave your response in the comments below. Thanks and good luck!
How To Play Live Poker Tournament with FTP Pros
Today I want to inform you about pretty cool promotion that is going on at the Full Tilt Poker.
As you know, this online poker room has some of the best poker players in their team. To name just a couple of them: Phil Ivey, Gus Hansen, Tom Dwan, Chris Ferguson, Patrik Antonius and Allen Cunningham.
Now let me ask you this: Would you like to play live poker tournament with these guys for a total prize of $120,000? Who wouldn’t want to do that, right?
I am sure it would be great to talk to some of these players and ask them whats up with them! In case you win the tournament, getting those $120,000 would be nice addition to the whole experience as well!
If you think playing live poker with the Pros is impossible, then you have probably not heard of the Full Tilt Poker promotion called Poker Lounge before! Let me explain this a little bit further.
Basically, the Poker Lounge is a series of 10 TV Poker shows (like High Stakes Poker for example) that will be airing on Chanel 4 on Tuesdays from June 22nd 2010 to Avgust 24th 2010 and will be featuring 5 FTP professionals + 1 FTP player playing eachother in live poker tournaments.
The best part about the Poker Lounge is the fact that you can participate in one of these shows too! Here is how you can get an entry to the above mentioned TV Poker show:
How to qualify for the Poker Lounge TV Show
The only way of qualifying for this TV Show is by playing Poker Lounge online qualifiers at Full Tilt Poker.
These qualifiers have been running there from April 4th and will continue to do so until the July 4th 2010. Basically, 4 qualifiers are still to be played: two (2) on June 13th, one (1) on June 20th and the last one on July 4th.
You can buy into these qualifiers directly for $600 + $40 (exception: the buyin for the qualifier on June 13th is $300 + $22).
Do not worry if this sum of money is more than your bankroll allows you to buyin at this moment. There are also satellites available. The lowest satellite buyin is $10.
It is a long way to buyin into the satellite for $10, win it, get a ticket for Poker Lounge Qualifier, win it, get a ticket for Poker Lounge TW Show, win it and get a prize of $120,000 but nonetheless, it can be done!
You will find the qualifiers and satellites in the Full Tilt Poker lobby under Tournaments / Live Events / All / All Types / Highest.
Wish you all the best! In case you do get a ticket for Poker Lounge TV Show, say hi to the FTP Pros from me as well! : ) Good luck
How To Find The Best Online Casino Suite?
Hey guys! It has been a while since my last post, so it is time to write another one. This one is not going to be entirely about poker, but I think you will like it anyways.
Basically, I am going to try and answer the question in the title: How to find the best online casino suite?
In case you have been read every post I have written and published here on scatmann, then seeing me blogging about online gambling is not a suprise for you. This is because you know that occasionally I also throw in an article about online casino gambling as well.
Anyways, finding the best online casino can be either very hard or very easy. Generally speaking, it depends on how you search for or gather the information about casino gambling sites available to play on.
I assume all of us (or atleast most of us) like to keep things simple and easy as much as possible. That is why I want to give you a couple of tips on how to find the best gambling room on the internet.
The process is basically similar (if not even identical) to finding the best internet poker site or any other product or service that can be bought or performed online. The information I am about to share below is nothing spectacular, but nonetheless it can be useful, especially if you have not done any serious online gambling (or shopping) up until now.
Tips On How to Find The Best Online Casinos:
The first thing you should do is find websites about gambling sites! There are numerous websites, blogs or/and forums available on the internet that deal especially with gambling sites, so this should not be a problem.
When finding a couple of casino gambling websites, start reading the articles on it. Focus especially on reading reviews.
This will not only provide you with basic information about certain casino room, but will also inform you what to expect from it and more importantly what you will be getting in case you decide to join the reviewed casino site.
Another important thing you should have in mind: Read more than one review on more than one website!
Why do you want to do that? Well, if one blog tells you that certain gambling site is the best and other 10 blogs tell you that gambling site is no good, then reading those other 10 reviews just saved you some troubles, right?
In general, when finding the best online casino suite for you, inform yourself about as many things as possible! Read reviews, read forums, do a search on facebook,…see what others are saying about it. If players have nothing bad to say about it, then that is definitely a good sign!
Don’t know where to start? Then you will love this casino website: free online casinos
That is all for now. If you have anything to add, please leave it in the comments below. Apart from that, wish you all the best and good luck at the poker tables and thanks for reading my blog posts! See you around!
High stakes poker cash games are everywhere!
Nowadays, it is not unusal to see high stakes poker cash games on TV anymore. There are many TV Poker shows where you can observe professional poker players playing stakes as high as $300 / $600 and even more.
To give you a couple of examples, just think of TV Show called High Stakes Poker. They are currently in their 6th season already, which means people like me and you really enjoy watching such TV shows.
High Stakes Poker are just one of these TV shows available for you to watch. There are also other interesting ones like Durrr’s live million dollar cash games challenge, or Poker after dark Cash Game.
Seeing such shows on mainstream TV is by my opinion good indicator how poker games have become popular all over the world in the last 3 or 4 years. Same goes for TV ads that advertise different poker rooms.
I live in Slovenia and the poker was never advertised on TV as much as I see it these days (I am not sure about your country though). But I suppose that is a good thing.
Online High Stakes Poker Cash Games
But what about online high stakes poker? Is it possible to watch the same professional poker players (that we see on TV) play online as well?
I am sure you know the answer already, but anyways: Yes, you can see these high stakes players playing online too!
Although it is hard to predict when players like Tom Durrr Dwan, Gus Hansen or Ilari Ziigmund Sahamies will actually be playing online, you will bump into them sooner or later. Just like I did!
To cut the long story short, I logged into Full Tilt Poker one Friday and there they were Durr and Ziigmund blasting eachother in $500 / $1000 Online Pot-limit Heads Up cash games.
Since I wanted to show it to you, I even recorded one of the biggest pots for you to see it. Here is is:
To conclude, high stakes poker cash games can not only be seen on TV, but on the internet as well! You never know, when you will log into the Full Tilt Poker and see some of the best poker players playing for the highest limits available.
What is your favorite poker show? You can leave it in comments below! : )
Rush Poker Tournaments introduced at Full Tilt Poker
After Rush Poker cash games, Full Tilt has now introduced Rush Poker tournaments too!
Good news coming from Full Tilt Poker for those of you who like to play online poker fast and spend as little time waiting for another hand as possible!
After bringing on online Rush Poker cash games, which is a kind of revolution in online poker, Full Tilt Poker has now introduced online Rush Poker tournaments too! The rules of playing this type online poker tournaments are not much different than with cash games:
Again, as soon as you fold your hand or the hand is over you immediately get seated to another table and receive a new hand. That also means that every registered poker player at the Rush Poker tourney you are playing in could be your potential opponent.
If you need some Rush Poker cash game tips or better understanding of it, I suggest you check out these two blog posts I have made:
Here are few more words about Rush Poker tournaments:
About online Rush Poker Tournaments
Rush Poker tournaments run in the way described above until there are only 30 players left.
At that point, the tables will go from standard full ring (9 players) to short handed (6 players) until the final tables. At the final table, things get back to normal again where hands are played just like with any other (online) poker tournament.
How to register for Rush Poker Tournaments
The first thing you need to do is log into the Full Tilt Poker (or register first if you dont have FTP account yet) and then find the Rush Poker tournaments using Browse function:
Tournaments / All / Holdem / No-limit
The Rush Poker tourneys will be marked with black letter »R«, so you will be able to recognize them easily. You can also use FTP’s Advanced Filter and simply create yourself a list of all Rush Poker tournaments available.
In case you have something to add, feel free to leave it in the comments below. Have fun and see you around!
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