Archive for February, 2010
Bad Luck in Poker
February 3rd, 2010 | Author: admin
For a game where most players rarely consider luck, there are lots of superstitions in poker. When you mention that someone was lucky in that poker tournament they won, be careful of how you say it. For instance, if you mention that you were unlucky, your luck may never change.
Ok, that may sound a bit ubsurd, but poker is a game loaded with superstitions. Did you know that if you are playing a game with two seperate decks and you are asked to pick the deck, you should always pick the deck of cards that is furthest from you? Or, how about If you get a run of bad cards, you must sit on a hankerchief to break your bad luck? It’s actually considered good luck to blow through a deck of cards while they are being shuffled.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: 
Bad Beat Poker – It Happens
February 2nd, 2010 | Author: admin
If you ever see an angry poker player carrying on and throwing a fit about a hand, you can generally assume this player has taken a bad beat. “Bad beat” is a poker term referring to having a strong dominating hand lose to a much weaker hand held by another player.
If you’ve read my previous uplifting article about bad beat jackpots, you might be excited about the possibility of experiencing a large bad beat in a brick-and-mortar casino, but most players hope they can defy the laws of the universe and never have to experience bad beat poker.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re playing online poker or brick-and-mortar poker, players are constantly getting frustrated and complaining about bad beats. If I had a dollar for every bad beat story I’ve heard in my life, I wouldn’t be sitting here playing a $20 online multi-table tournament; I’d be vacationing at the beach.
Generally it’s the better and more experienced players who are amazed at losing to large underdog hands. Newer players often don’t realize the odds of a bad beat poker hand like pushing all in with AdJc and miraculously beating AsKs by spiking a Jack on the river.
Experienced and educated poker players need to take a step back and realize that bad beats will always happen when playing poker. Most decent poker players always talk about how amazed they are when they experience a bad beat, and they try to claim that it always happens to them. One thing that experienced players don’t realize is that if they are constantly playing with weaker opponents and experiencing bad beats, it’s because they always have the dominating hand.
Read the rest of this entry »
Bad Beat
February 1st, 2010 | Author: admin
If you aren’t familiar with bad beat jackpots, let me explain. In most brick and mortar casinos there is a progressive jackpot that builds over time, called the bad beat jackpot. Poker rooms usually take out a dollar or two out of every raked pot and put it into? the bad beat jackpot.
The rules for hitting the jackpot are different in each casino. At some casinos you only need Aces full of Jacks or better beaten, while some casinos offer even harder beats such as a four of a kind beaten. In most card rooms, you must also be playing at a limit table. No limit games generally don’t qualify, as the jackpot would be hit much more frequently with players constantly all in and seeing every card the board has to offer. When a bad beat happens and is verified, everyone gets paid.
The structure for a bad beat jackpot payout also varies from casino to casino. It is common to see the losing hand receive 40% of the jackpot, the winning hand receive 25% of the jackpot, the rest of the table split 15% of the jackpot, and the rest of the poker room split the remaining 20%. As you can see, when someone hits a jackpot, there is plenty of room for everyone to celebrate.
In the last four years I’ve played countless hours of poker in casinos in Missouri, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, and Oklahoma and had never experienced a bad beat jackpot until last night.
I headed up to Cherokee Casino, in West Siloam Springs, Oklahoma, with a buddy of mine, to get a few hours of play in. While waiting for our seats to open, we sat down in fairly loose $4/$8 limit game. In this poker room, $4/$8 limit is the lowest limit game offered, so it feels much like playing $2/$4 and $3/$6, where having 7 callers pre-flop on a raised hand is common and where Aces hardly stand a chance.
We had only been playing for about 30 minutes when it all went down. I was sitting in seat 9, with a loose player sitting to my right, in seat 8. This player was 23 years old and was also a dealer at the casino. (In the larger casinos, usually if you are a dealer you are not allowed to play in games in your own card room, but this isn’t a rule at Cherokee Casino.)
Read the rest of this entry »
