#867 – October is for (Poker) Lovers, Part III – Does a Bad Beat Cease to Make a Sound if Someone Hears It?

I made it into the money with a lot of chips and then lost most of them when I ran pocket queens into pocket kings. But I stayed patient, was opportunistic, and rebuilt. Once again, the experience reminded me about what I love about playing tournament poker online. I enjoy the mental challenge, of having skills and using them, of not necessarily having everything go right but staying in the hunt, scheming and slugging away.

By this time, Jo Anne had joined me in my office and was watching the play of hands and listening to my hand-by-hand commentary. I wasn?t right 100% of the time, but I impressed my wife with my predictions about the flow of the game, the actions and motivations of each of the players, and (usually) the identity of their hole cards.

I made the final table and we were staring at the possibility of my first five-figure tournament payout in what seemed like eons. I had a big stack with six players left and had an opponent try to bluff-reraise my pocket queens. We got it all-in and he had K-7. (What is it with these guys and K-7 that I don?t get?) It was the biggest pot of the tournament and would have given me a huge chip lead with five players remaining . . . but he got another king on the river.

Jo Anne exploded, screaming and swearing in such an uncharacteristic way that our daughters ran downstairs, alarmed. I was unfazed, focusing on managing my final chips, though I busted a few hands later (on another bad beat) in sixth place.

I wasn?t as surprised by Jo Anne?s reaction as I was my own. It has been frustrating these last two months to come close so many times and not win. On a few occasions I have yelled out to Jo Anne after a bad beat to make her come into my office so I can angrily repeat the details. But in this occasion, with Jo Anne getting upset for me, I didn?t have to.

So thats what bad beats are about: validation. If you can just get someone to validate your play, it shouldn?t bother you when you get an unfair result. The real challenge is making yourself become that someone.

So what I made $2,000 instead of $10,000? I had fun, participated in the technological miracle that lets me play poker and communicate with people from Mykonos and Belarus without leaving my office, and remembered why I still love poker. That should keep me going, at least until I experience the misery of the just-announced FTOP XIV.

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