We were talkin’ about cold decks last time right? Well, I experienced such a situation again yesterday when playing a multi-table sit ‘n go on Pokerstars. Imagine this: you are playing for a few hours now with the blinds already gone up to 150/300. You’re sitting there on the button and you receive two beautiful Ladies and you have about 3000 chips left. You’re sure of one thing: your chips are going in, right there on that very moment.

Look what happened:

So there’s already a raise in front of me. Well, what I’m gonna do? I’m never gonna fold this hand, I’m sure of it. I push my chips in the middle and I get reraised for a lot more. I know what’s happening from that moment on: I’m against AA or KK and I played the complete evening to end up like this. That’s exactly what happens, my opponent even makes a set and on the turn I have three outs left for a split pot. That was it…

As I pointed out before, there’s a huge difference between these two phenoms in poker. I switched from the sit and go’s to the microstakes cashgames the other day, and what I experienced over there is exactly what you can call a cold deck. Let’s have a look:

You see, I flop a flush but my opponent flops a higher flush. This is called ‘flush over flush’. We can’t do much about it: the stakes are not high enough and the stacks not deep enough to get away from such a hand. Other situations that are known as cold decks occur when it’s dealt KK vs AA preflop or when two players flop a ’set over set’.

You wonder what’s all this about? It’s exactly the process of getting a bad beat. You go in as a 68% favorite, you improve to 86% on the flop and on the river you are BAMBOOZLED!

I started playing some 9 handed sit and go’s on Full Tilt and I’m running pretty good at the moment, I’m $95 up after 5 days now, playing the $5 tournaments. And then you’re suddenly reminded of the fact that a bad beat is always just one card away. Look at it:

Threehanded, less than ten big blinds, pocket jacks. What you’re gonna do? Flop a set, build a party. Drawing dead on the turn, unbe-fuckin’-lievable. That’s poker. Some REAL cruelty next time.

Every poker player knows a bad beat is not the same as a cold deck situation. In a bad beat there’s always a donkey involved who played a hand bad and happened to be lucky in the end. In a cold deck situation, there’s not much both players could have done otherwise to avoid the situation they ended up with. I’ve got some good examples today.

I was playing some NLHE at Full Tilt and we were down to three players in sixhanded sit and go. This is what happened:

So after the flop I’m a huge favorite as you can deduct from the percentages of the calculator. My opponent flops his Aces, but that’s isn’t very dangerous at the first sight as I flop a set of eights.  Two cards will have to drop down in my disadvantage to lose the land. Yup… I had to blow off some steam at the spiderman slots for a moment after that hand. After a couple of hours I returned to playing poker, but I decided to play some Pot Limit Omaha at Everest Poker. But there I ended up with the following hand:

So this isn’t really a bad beat but we can call this a cold deck: this is a sick flop but there’s not much to do about it, it simply is the nuts against the second nuts. I flop Kings full of sixes while my opponent is lucky to hold the two remaning sixes in his hand. There’s a very small chance you won’t see all the chips in the middle in this kind of situations. More hands next time, Hold’em, Omaha, whatever: cruelty is everywhere!

Hi all, it’s been a while but that’s because I have to teach my students about all the cruelty in the world lately. But don’t worry, they’re having a good time. How different is that for me when sitting on the online poker table.

I played some tournaments on Pokerstars and I had some issues with pocket kings to say the least. Let’s watch the first hand:

So I make a very decent raise preflop and some guy calls with Q9 and hits two pair. Not much I can do there I guess, could easily have been AQ or the A high diamond draw. Another tournament:

So these are the situatons that are SO important in poker: most of your money is in the middle and you’re an almost 85% favorite to double up. Because the guy with KK has two different suits, he still has 10%. But they throw the freakin’ case King in front of me…

Something different today: I’ve got some hands from heads-up confrontations where I gave the bad beat instead of receiving it. Let’s have a look at the first one:

I’ve only ten big blinds left and I wake up with an Ace, so I shove trying to rob a precious blind. Of course my opponent got to have Aces exactly in that hand…But hey I catch two ducks and take the guy’s chips. During another game I was facing a player with the very creative name anusgrape. He thinks raising me all-in with Aces is a good move:

If you’ve such a lack of creativity as a poker player, it’s maybe just justice that I win the hand instead of cruelty .

You’ll always have them at your table in a random homegame: amateurs who tell you they don’t like to play Aces. I can only say one thing to this kind of bullcrap: bring on those Aces, still the best hand preflop in NLHE!

Of course you’ll lose now and then with this hand, just like with every other hand. And sure it’s harsh when it happens to you two times in a row, just like it happened to me this week:

Yes this is harsh, and yes I would have preferred to win these hands instead of lose them, specifically because they were both played in the final phase of the tournament, but I’ll play them exactly the same again, anytime, anywhere.

Last time I showed you some poker cruelty, it was kind of a bad beat with pocket sailboats. Now I had this hand again in a 45 handed tournament ($10 buy-in), but this time it REALLY was a suck out I had to face.

Here’s the hand:

This really is a flop from heaven: I flop my set again and it’s really disguised. This moron decides to go all-in on this flop with a massive overbet and I insta call as I have him crushed like hell: I am a 93% percent favorite in this situation! I know, this retard still has a small chance to outdraw me when the board AND his pair pairs, but what are the chances? About 7%…

I was grinding the $.10/.25 cashgames on PokerStars yesterday and I lost a pot of about 120 BB’s thanks to what you can call a bad beat. Although there are a lot of situations which are worse, it felt like a real classic one.

Maybe it was because the player on my left was already irritating me quite a while. Here’s the hand I’m talking about:

This guy minraises again and I logically call the reraise, considering the pot and implied odds. The flop is very nice, as it’s very likely that I flopped the best hand here. I lead out and when he minraises me again I decide to not fool around any longer. I happen to have outflopped his pair but have to dodge an OESD: I’m a 67% favorite here. River kills me.

Well, let’s be clear from the start: life is good. Sometimes it just doesn’t feel that way. Let that be the first lesson you learn on this blog, with many to follow .

That’s why I’ll kick off easily today with a little poker hand I wasn’t even involved in. If I’m playing online, I play on Pokerstars because I simply think it’s the best room out there. I play all kind of games as a matter fact. I like to grind the cash games on the micro stakes ($.10/.25) and I like tournaments with a field of 90 to 500 players. Besides Texas Hold’em I like to play some Pot Limit Omaha also now and then.

But what’s going on in this hand? I’m playing a MTT ($5 buy-in) on Pokerstars and the blinds are already high. Then this happens:

The standard raise in early position is a sign of a strong hand so I’m out without any doubt. But the SB decides to call with his pocket fours. Well on the flop it’s kind of a cold deck situation that they both flop their set. But ok, Player 6 was already way behind preflop so it’s kinda justice for Player 8. But the turn card IS a bad beat. I feel for player 8!