Backdoor Flushes, Albert Einstein, and Attitude

While playing hold'em during a recent trip to Black Hawk, Colorado, I wasn't running well. Holding the A K in early position, I raised and got two callers. When the flop came K-Q-5 rainbow, I bet out and got one caller. The 2 came on the turn, putting two spades on the board, and I led again and got called. The river brought the A, and I bet again. Uh-oh, the pot was raised; I called, and looked in disbelief as the man showed me the K J.

Hitting a backdoor flush is about a 22-to-1 shot. I also could have lost if a jack hit or if runner-runner came for a straight. Sure, it's a bad beat, but as far as hands go in poker, it's not so out of the ordinary. What wasn't so ordinary was that it was the third time in less than two hours that I had flopped the best hand and lost to a runner-runner flush. The odds of that happening are 10,648-to-1.

While spending two weeks at Binion's Horseshoe during the World Series of Poker, I heard a virtual smorgasbord of bad-beat stories. What always amazes me is how players are so proficient at keeping statistics on their bad beats. "I've lost with pocket aces six of the last seven times I've had them." Or, "I've had A-K 17 times in the past two days, and I've flopped a pair only twice."

As legend has it, Albert Einstein couldn't remember his own phone number. His reasoning was that the brain has a limited capacity, and it is wasteful to use it for information that can be readily retrieved. To the players out there who are so quick to remember their bad beats and keep statistics on their misfortune, consider what else you could be using your mind for. To me, these are the type of players who want to lose and just can't wait to tell everyone how unlucky they are. Rather than focusing on finding tells on their opponents or flaws in their own games, they choose to occupy their minds with data to support their own misery.

In my case, my view of a 10,648-to-1 shot causing my poker misfortune was a statistical anomaly. In Black Hawk, Colorado, there is a law that the maximum bet in any game is $5. Since I typically don't play any game lower than $15-$30, consider the good fortune I had that I lost three times to a runner-runner flush in a game with a $5 maximum bet. Most people would be embarrassed to admit losing $340 in a $2-$5 game, but the way I looked at it, the fact that it happened in my one session in Black Hawk rather than the half-dozen sessions at the Horseshoe is what I call running lucky!

A couple of weeks later, I was at Hollywood Park when a losing player at the table got philosophical about life. "It's funny how life is sometimes," he said. "One crazy night could be memories of great sex … or 18 years of child support." This was the same player who kept complaining about being beaten on the river when he failed to raise preflop with big pairs or bet the best hand on the flop or the turn. I got the impression that this guy looked forward to going home (or, more likely, to a bar) and commiserating about how unlucky he is in poker and life. If he viewed the birth of a child as nothing more than "child support," that speaks volumes about his attitude.

Mistakes have a way of compounding. When a basketball player turns the ball over, he often picks up a quick foul, or fails to run down the court to play defense. When you miss a house payment, not only do you get hit with a penalty, but your credit score falls, making it harder to secure a loan in the future. In poker, when you take a bad beat or make a mistake, nothing negative happens in the future – unless you allow it to.

So, the next time you take a bad beat, think about Einstein or the 10,648-to-1 shot that went against me. And whatever you do, delete it from your memory. Your attitude just might impact how you play the next hand.

Greg Dinkin is the co-author of the number-one selling memoir in America, Amarillo Slim in a World Full of Fat People: The Memoirs of the Greatest Gambler Who Ever Lived (www.thepokermba.com/amarilloslim).