On an online poker blog, one has to mention ‘bad beat’ at some point of time. Bad beats are a part and parcel of the game of poker. If you are a player who can boast of a reasonable duration of experience, you’d have suffered more than share of bad beats, and dished out some of that suffering to others as well.

Every poker player has a poker story (or two!) to tell other players about bad beat they received online or offline. Bad beats happen because poker is a game of chance; in the end, even the least probable outcome is a mathematical possibility. Also, players often forget to take into account the shifting probabilities that emerge as each betting round passes and more cards are dealt. A hand that is an overwhelming favorite to take down the pot before the flop, turn, or river is just a favorite. Better probabilities and odds at the start don’t guarantee a win all the time.

The number of bad beats received depends on the number of hands played by a player in a day/week/month  or a year . Greater the number of hands you play, faster do the chances of getting a bad beat increase. For a poker player to receive a bad beat is roughly the equivalent of a boxer, apparently getting the better of his opponent, being staggered by a sudden hard punch. It is not enough in itself to knock the victim out, but it can set him up for the final defeat; the pugilist would swing his fists wildly, anger clouding his better judgment and training, missing more than he lands, and possibly opening himself up to a more potent attack. The poker player at the receiving end of a bad beat too acts in a somewhat similar manner, as he forgets all about skillful play and basically starts going all out hoping for a lucky break. In poker lingo, it’s called going on a tilt.

It doesn’t have to be that way, however, if you train yourself for the possibility of such a situation. Just as a strong chin would help the boxer from our example remain in control despite a temporary setback, a calm, cool head in a bad beat situation would help many a poker  player.

There’s an oft parroted caveat by players that in online poker, the chances of getting a bad beat are greater than in offline games, which couldn’t actually be further from the truth. It isn’t hard to understand what gives people that idea, though. As we’ve said before, players  increase their chances of getting a bad beat as they play more and more hands. Online games are faster and some players even play on multiple tables at once. In an hour, a player plays 60 to 70 hands on an average, whereas while playing live games you end up playing, on an average, 15 to 20 hands in an hour. So if a player  would get one bad beat in a live game the chances are more than 2 times a player will get online, and if a player is playing on more than one table online, the chances multiply.

On a side note, online poker is completely fair and safe, as the cards dealt are completely random, thanks to the Random Number Generator (RNG) component that is, to put it simply, the heart of the online poker software. Players with little knowledge about the basic workings of online poker software are prone to crying foul about the ‘fairness’ of the system when they are losing, while the real reason may simply be that they’re on a tilt and playing irrationally. However, the fact is that if you have taken due care in checking out the operator’s credentials and their software certifications, there’s no reason for you to doubt whether the RNG adheres to industry standards; as the aforementioned certifications are issued by third-party institutions which have the last word on all things related to online gaming software development.

There are some players who love to give bad beats to others. Here’s a fun fact to cheer you up the next time you run into one of those: they are also the ones who will lose a lot of money in the long run. One out of ten times a player would give you a bad beat, but the remaining 9 times he will pay you; the total would come to  more than what you would invest in the game you got a bad beat in.

On a parting note, we’d like to take a page out of the books of every poker blog out there, and give you a candid (if heavily cliched) piece of advice:

If you can’t take a  bad beat ,stop playing poker

A big hello to all our readers out there! It’s been a while, we know, since you heard from your favorite online poker club, and we do regret that. Just couldn’t be helped though: as you could have guessed from our review of The Dark Knight Rises, we were quite properly smitten. So, when we were not busy working (yes, we do that), we were working out alternate scenarios for any future Batman films. It would probably make a fine tome of fan fiction one of these days, but that’s a story for another time.

This week, we’re going to talk about something we have been pretty excited about for quite some time now. In fact we were almost hoping for yet another trip to Russia, preferably via Boom, Belgium. You guessed it, we’re talking about what is, inarguably, the biggest music fest in the world: Tomorrowland.

The uninitiated might want to call it the Woodstock of EDM (Electro Dance Music), but that would be a travesty of sorts considering that Tomorrowland literally dwarfs any other musical extravaganza in terms of the masses it attracts. Before we go on to talk about that, however, allow us to give you a little background on house music.
(more…)

Hi I am Vishal, Game Promotions Executive at Cybertech International Holdings Ltd. And this is my first post on this poker blog. Since the day I joined I have been a part of the weekly in-house Friday night poker tournaments. I guess everybody in the office awaits this day because it’s the end of the week and these Friday night poker tournaments make us all feel in it, be it somebody who’s new to the game to somebody who’s well established by the even and odds of it, plays the…Read more

Today WSOP is the biggest poker tournament around the globe and an inexhaustible topic of discussion for all the poker clubs and blogs. It is every poker player’s dream to be a part of World Series of Poker, stay at the hotels in Vegas, sit in a room at the Horseshoe and win millions of dollars. History of WSOP It all started in 1970 when Binny Benion called top player of the game, decided that each winner of the event will be given a gold bracelet in honor of his…Read more

The ongoing 2012 UEFA European Football Championship, commonly referred to as Euro 2012, is the 14th European Championship for national football teams organized by UEFA. The final tournament is being hosted, for the first time in history, by Poland and Ukraine between 8 June and 1 July 2012. The championship features 16 nations who will fight for the trophy, with Spain aiming to defend their 2008 title. When it comes to international football, only two tournaments steal the show: the World Cup and the Euro cup, the latter being less…Read more