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!

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!