Free Online Poker Guide To How To Avoid Bad Beats

Here’s a weird fact for you – Without bad beats, no tournament, poker online free or otherwise will finish. That can’t be right you might think, for example, after all, at preflop won’t A-K will beat callers with A-Q every time? And isn’t it true that players who move all-in with 8-8 should win against callers with A-K? And for sure if you have AA yiu shoul clean up every time 100%

Not at all. Our total faith in certain hands can be badly misplaced at times.

First, we will make a hypothetical poker tournament where players who move all-in preflop will decide their hands preflop.

Thus A-K is beat against 2-2, there and then preflop. A-K beats A-Q. And A-A beats everything.

Do you see how many callers it will have?

Callers must wait for premium hands before calling, which will prolong the poker tournament.

Bad beats are some of the anomalies seen in a poker tournament to shorten it.

a) Going back to out 100% faith in A-K against A-Q, our faith really should not 100% after all.
b) It ought to be 75% only, as A-K is beat by A-Q the remaining 25% of times.
c) And with so many players who move all-in with A-K, a caller with A-x should win 25% of times.
d) If 50 players in the tournament move all-in with A-K and 50 callers call with Ace-lower, isn’t it expected that 1/4 of 50, or about 13 players, should get eliminated?

On pocket pairs against A-K, it is almost a coin flip.

a) It can be decided approximately by simply flipping an actual coin.
b) In the long run, pocket pairs win, however, because of a slight edge.
c) But it doesn’t mean that 8-8 will invariably win against A-K.
d) If 8-8 winning against A-K is an approximately 55-to-45 (or 11-to-9) favorite, there are almost as many players winning an all-in with a small pair against two overcards as players bumped out in the tournament in the same situation.
e) The bumped out players should not fret; it’s the laws of probability that are hanging.

When a player would like to avoid bad beats, naturally that player will wait for premium hands. But waiting around for premium hands will substantially diminish the player’s stack because of blinding out.

That player should move all-in, at some point, otherwise they suffer the oblivion of blinding out. But moving all-in will not promise a double-up; it is just a means of attempting to restore your stack to a more comfortable level. Bad beats are all around.

Here is a last note: Bad beats exist not just preflop, and also postflop.

a) Say Player X has 8-8 and Player Y has 7-6 in a board of 5-8-4-A.
b) Player X flopped a Set but Player Y hits a Straight.
c) If Player Y moves all-in and X calls, then Y’s win isn’t assured yet.
d) X can certainly still pair the Board for a Full House or Quads.
e) And if X does pair the board, you can think of it as a bad beat.

And it doesn’t matter what their stack sizes are. Both players could be above chip average, with Y having less chips than X. So bad beats are ways to ensure speedy tournaments through the elimination of anybody, short-stack or players at the top of the pack.

I hope this has been thought provoking. The root message being that you ought to not assume that particular cards will always win, that’s simply not possible. Plus bad beats really are not bad luck, it’s just that you’ve been picked by the laws of probability to get a bad beat!

That being said, think about some of the examples above. You simply can’t avoid bad beats but by understanding probability in poker it is possible to lessen your risk and exposure to them by either folding some types of hand more often, not going all-in or betting less so that if it does go south you don’t get removed 100%.

But at the end of the day the only way to avoid bad beats 100% is just not to play poker! So hopefully when they come your bad beat games are on free online poker tables rather than in mortgage sized WSOP games!

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