Analysis (bad beats or mistakes)
Nov 19, 2008 12:47 am
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Ok so Sunday night after I got done playing all my tournaments I take a step back and take an honest assessment of how the week has gone. I look at my tournament and cash game play and see how much money I won for the week or lost for the week. I do this same thing every week just to get a feel of how I'm progressing. Well over the past few months I have come to the conclusion that if I wasn't playing in cash games I would not be able to support my tournament play.
When I broke down my hand history of the week I noticed that in my tournament play I have been on a bit of a bad run, And have ran into a lot of cooler situations( meaning hands im not going to get away from but end up on second nuts) Im not going to post any hand histories because this is not a bad beat blog. In fact I'm happy with my play for the week after analyzing the hand histories. Why would I be happy about getting knocked out on "bad beats" you ask. Because when looking back at my play I noticed for this week I played very well, made very few mistakes, and got max value out of the hands I did win.
Running into coolers and 2 outers is part of the game and I cant control those thing, But when It came to the things I could control (my play, reads, table awareness,ect) I was very happy . Honestly if you think about it there is only 3 ways you will be knocked out of a tournament ;either you are going to make a mistake and go bust looking like a donk, you are going to get your money in good and run into a bad beat, or you are going to run into a cold deck situation and out of those 3 situations there is only 1 that should have you leaving the table angry!!!!
So the question I pose to all of you here on Railbirds is this : Would you rather be knocked out of a tournament on a bad beat or on a mistake???
© Copyright 2009
22 comments
Would much rather it be a bad beat, but I need to look at mine, making too many mistakes lately.
But the bad beats and rivered hands are the one that bother you the most.
Good blog. Played in 6 tournaments over the course of the last 2 days, 3 freerolls and 3 with an everage buy-in of $2. I made it deep in all 6 but didn't manage a cash in any of them. Not because of my play, but because of bad beats. Each time I got all my money into a pot I had the best hand with just the river to come, with the exception of one where I pushed all-in on the flop, but still had them down to 5 outs. Reading this reminded me that I shouldn't be dissapointed with my play because I am not in control of the cards.
And to answer your question, I hate making mistakes. Hate it. So I would much rather take the bad beat.
I honestly would rather take beat after beat than to be constantly second guessing my play. But let's be honest. When someone plays a tournament that encompasses a couple hundred hands or more, whether that someone is Dan Harrington or me, there are going to be mistakes made. The trick is to minimize them, minimize the effect that the mistakes have on your chip stack, and most importantly, to minimize your perception and attitude towards the tournament in general.
However, there is a fourth way that people get knocked out of tournaments that you overlooked, and to be completely frank, it's how I go out of most of mine. It's when you are forced to make a move short stacked and you run into a better hand. Just because you have to push with A-rag and you run into AA doesn't mean you made a mistake.
You have it in your power to turn a bad-beat around simply by realizing this simple truth: The more bad beats you encounter, the luckier you are. It's a sign that you are playing against opponents who continually take the worst of it, and if you can't beat someone who always takes the worst of it, you can't beat anyone.
---Lou Krieger
The only bad luck for a good gambler is bad health. Any other setbacks are temporary aggravation.
---Benny Binion
Bad beats only happen to good players.
---Joe Crow
If you always start with the worst hand, you never have a bad beat story to tell.
---Chuck Thompson
It's not whether you won or lost, but how many bad beat stories you were able to tell.
---Grantland Rice
I would rather gone down to a bad beat.
Looking at it another way, a bad beat can be good for the soul, make us better player's when we learn from them, and even make us better people to be around.
Learning to deal with them has saved many of good players from tilt.
You can come back from a bad beat. You can never come back from a mistake that you don't learn from.
The Lou Krieger quote is prceless.
Rather take a bad beat. That said, I must realize that in tourney play not making a call when you may have won ( you got pushed off a winner ) is a smaller mistake than calling or shoving when you could have got away from it and got busted out. I am a firm believer that outs , odds etc must always be balanced with intuition and balls in tourney play. Sometimes you have to have big enough balls to make the lay down, instead of calling it. Saying, I had the best going in , is little consolation from the rail IMO. I try to avoid those situations but you will rarely go deep in a MTT without having to call an all in or make one with your strong hand pre-flop. Picking who you do it against can be crucial, if you have the choice. My biggest problem is taking on the big stack with my better hand and getting out drawn. I know I should not go against them BUT if I win against them, I am the big stack and final table here I come. MTT's are insane LOL but it is my kind of insanity.
Anyway I am rambling .. sometimes bad beats are mistakes and sometimes they are just unavoidable. Sometimes making the mistake of not being in the position to get a bad beat ie folding the better hand, will get you deeper. MTT are different animals than any other, GL.
Good blog and I commend you for your dedication to the game by taking stock of your play and critiqueing yourself.
Peace,J
I have no control over a bad beat.
If (when) I make a mistake, hopefully I can learn from it.
Being KO'd because I made a mistake HURTS!!! Bad beats don't hurt. You can just shrug and move on.....but making a fatal mistake requires taking the time to reflect and learn, repair the holes in the wall and go to the computer store to purchase a replacement monitor.
J/K to all you cat lovers out there
Interesting blog, great point that the only time someone should be upset about losing in a tournament is when they make a mistake.
The only thing worse than a bad beat story is a bad beat blog
Maybe people will read this and learn to stop with the bad beat blog already !
We all take them but we all don't act the same when it happens. What does it solve to rant, cry, or talk trash when you get felted to a 2 outer??
If i am making mistakes it means i am not playing as well as i could be. And it will cost me more in the long run.
Enjoy.
Bumpin it Hammer style...