So Sorry

I recently busted someone out of a small tournament on a bad beat. It was nothing you can really blame me for, as I was forced (so I felt) to commit my chips with A-10, and my opponent with A-Q flopped a queen, only to see me draw two perfect cards for a backdoor flush. As bad beats go, it wasn't the worst anyone's seen; I had a 24 percent chance of scooping the pot when the chips went in, which is pretty typical for a dominated hand. I don't think I could have played the hand any differently, so there was no one to blame. It was, however, toward the end of the tournament, and it propelled me to a decent finish, while my opponent exited shortly thereafter.

As I lowered myself back into my seat after the hand, I told my dismayed opponent that I was sorry. That's a funny thing to say at a poker table, where your good fortune, your entire reason for being there, fundamentally depends on bad things happening to your opponents. But I meant it. It's not the first time I've said so after someone's been the victim of my undeserved good fortune, and I've meant it every time. And, of course, I'm not the first or the last poker player to express sympathy to an opponent. But every now and then, someone challenges me on it: Why should I be sorry? Why apologize? Don't I want to win? Isn't saying you're sorry a sign of weakness in the no-holds-barred battle that poker should be?

First - and I should hope, obviously - saying I'm sorry isn't really an apology in the usual sense. It's a sincere expression of regret that my good fortune should have to come in a form that would be so painful to someone else. It's not a suggestion that I somehow don't deserve the chips, or that I would return them if I could. It's not even meant to express guilt, although I will admit that I don't like being at the center of someone else's bad-beat story. To be fair, most players understand this implicitly, and I even suspect that most players feel a little bad for their bad-beat victims.

But it's really the circumstances surrounding the beat and not the beat itself that inspire sympathy. Consider the hand I won. There are lots of ways to lose with A-Q, and even lots of ways for it to lose to A-10. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter that I made a backdoor flush as opposed to just flopping a 10. My opponent put his chips in knowing there was a chance I had a pocket pair or A-K, or even a garden-variety undominated hand like K-J, which is about a 63-37 dog. A smaller ace, my actual holding, was his best-case scenario. So, from that starting point, beyond which he had no control of either my hand or the board, his subjective chance of winning was less than 70 percent. As it happens, I was about a 70-24 underdog when the chips went in and the cards were turned up (there was roughly a 6 percent chance of a tie). In retrospect, it was not a great spot for my chips, but 24 percent is nothing to sneeze at when you're running out of time. And in the split second after he called but before our cards were turned up, my subjective chances were better than 24 percent, given that he might have called with a pocket pair or even a hand as weak as K-Q, a 60-40 dog to my A-10.

Losing as a 70-24 favorite is painful, but not as painful as losing with a 94-6 advantage, which was the situation after a queen flopped. The order of the cards doesn't have an impact on the outcome, but it does have an impact on my opponent's roller-coaster emotions. Had the flop come all spades with a queen, his advantage would have dwindled to 63-37 instead of ballooning to 94-6. It still would have merited some grumbling, but not quite as much. Had the flop come in the same suits that they did but without a queen, the advantage would have been more like 79-18. Given that he was going to watch the board, the order of the cards made for a painful way to lose - at least so it seemed to me (although he took it pretty well) - and I was genuinely sorry. I feel just as sorry when I'm not involved in the hand, but less compelled to comment.

Of course, I easily could have turned up K-K or even 8-8 and taken the pot, and it would have been just routine bad timing - nothing for anyone to feel bad about. But for better or for worse, some unfoldings are crueler than others. Is feeling sorry for the bad beats I inflict a weakness in my constitution as a poker player? My game has lots of weaknesses, but I don't think this is one of them. As much as I'm sorry to see my opponents suffer bad beats, it's still a solid plan B (plan A is going in as a favorite). Whatever sheepishness I feel is irrationally due to the minor embarrassment of having gotten my chips in as an underdog.

Daniel Kimberg is the author of Serious Poker and maintains a web site for serious poker players at www.seriouspoker.com. You can contact him at [email protected].