Bad Beats and Murphy’s Law

The same psychological drives that cause people to tell bad-beat stories also make them believe in Murphy’s Law and take many self-defeating actions. Murphy’s Law is: “If something can go wrong, it will go wrong.”

It’s nonsense. If it were valid, nothing would ever get done. Many things get done just about perfectly, and countless more go off reasonably well.

So, why do so many people believe such an obviously invalid law? For the same reason they believe they get more than their share of bad beats: They believe they deserve much better luck than they really get. They essentially whine, “Why do so many bad things happen to me?”

You may say to them, “But you’re not unlucky. You’re healthy, and you have a good job and a great family.”

They don’t want to hear that everyone’s luck is a mixture of good and bad. They resent not getting everything they think they deserve.

That Feeling is Everywhere
Nearly all of us — including me — are not good at perceiving reality about ourselves. We are particularly likely to distort the probabilities of rare and unpleasant events. We may intellectually accept that they occur about as often as expected, but when something rare and bad happens to us, we think that Murphy’s Law, the poker gods, or something else has jinxed us.

Bad Beats and Bad Thinking
You can’t do anything about bad beats, but you should change the way that you think about them. You probably have read that: (1) good players receive far more bad beats than bad ones, because they get their money in with the best of it; (2) if bad players didn’t occasionally draw out, they would stop taking foolish chances.

The second point has been called “The Beauty of Poker.” Because bad players occasionally get lucky, they keep taking foolish chances. Better yet, because they blame bad luck rather than bad play, they keep giving us their money.

Even players who understand these points often overreact to bad beats. They may intellectually accept that they happen to everybody about as often as the mathematicians predict. People will hit two-outers on the river or runner-runner flushes about 4 percent of the time. But, when one of these rare events happens, it feels like they happen all the time.

“I’d Rather Be Lucky Than Good”
You certainly have heard that comment many times, and you may have said it yourself. When someone who is losing heavily or has just lost a pot says it, he really means, “I’m good, but unlucky.”

Nonsense! If your results are bad, it’s your own fault, and your results won’t improve until you accept responsibility for them and plug the leaks in your game. The desire to preserve the belief “I’m good, but unlucky” causes many players to focus their attention on luck rather than on the only thing they control — their own play.

For example, a friend “proves” that he is unlucky by writing down every bad beat he gets, and he defines “bad beat” very liberally. If he was well ahead at any time during a hand but lost it, he regards it as a bad beat, and gets angry about it. After he told a bad-beat story, Card Player columnist Barry Tanenbaum said, “If you have 92 percent equity on the turn and win the pot, your 92 percent has turned into 100 percent. The other guy lost his 8 percent.”

Our friend may or may not have accepted that point intellectually, but at the gut level, he flatly rejected it. His anger about “lucky imbeciles” is his biggest weakness, and I’ll have more to say about that in my next column.

Self-fulfilling Prophecies
If you think you’re unlucky, you’ll be “unlucky.” I put quotation marks around it because I don’t mean the nonsense that your thoughts influence your cards. I mean that you will play badly, and your bad play will cause bad results. It happened recently to three different friends while they were playing limit hold’em. I’ll use false names.

When we were playing together, Arnie flopped the nut-flush draw on a board of K-7-4. One player bet, and two others called. Arnie just called. Later, I asked him, “Why didn’t you raise?”

He replied, “I never make my flushes.”

“Don’t be silly. I saw you make two tonight, and one of them took down a big pot.”

“Yeah, but I almost always miss.”

Of course, he makes them about as often as everyone else, but he refuses to believe it. Nobody makes many: When you start with two suited cards, you will make a flush only about one time out of 17. When you flop a flush draw, you will make it only about one-third of the time. In fact, since he missed that flush, he thinks that he saved money by not raising. Actually, he lost significant expected value.

Bob told me he was confident that he was ahead on the turn and that Judy was drawing to a flush, but he didn’t bet. Why? “Because Judy always makes her flushes, especially against me.” Since she will miss four out of five times, he gave up significant expected value by not betting, regardless of whether she made or missed that particular flush.

Barbara was on the button against four opponents. She flopped top two pair, but the turn put a three-straight and a three-flush on the board. It was a fairly large pot, and everyone checked to her. When a pot gets large (especially if several players are involved), you should do whatever increases your chances of winning it. If it costs you a bet or two, oh well.

Instead of protecting her hand, she immediately thought, “Darn it! Somebody drew out on me again!” So, she checked behind them, giving four players a free card. The river was a blank, and she won the pot. But, she probably lost a big bet or two. Worse yet, that free card could have made a flush, straight, or trips for someone who would have folded if she had bet. If that free card had beaten her, I’m sure that she would have complained — at least to herself — about her terrible luck. She would not have even considered the fact that her mistake cost her the pot.

Stop Feeling Sorry for Yourself
As long as you feel like an unlucky victim, you will play scared poker, and scared poker is bad poker. Thinking that you’re an unlucky victim will make you become one. You will fold, check, or call when you should bet or raise, costing you a little expected value here and there, and you will occasionally lose a big pot that you could have won. The cumulative effect of your weak, passive play will be bad results, and you will deserve them.

Conversely, when you stop feeling sorry for yourself, you will play your cards more confidently and decisively. And the better you play, the “luckier” you will get.

To learn more about yourself and other players, you can buy Dr. Schoonmaker’s books, Your Worst Poker Enemy and Your Best Poker Friend, at CardPlayer.com.