How to Handle Bad Beats in Poker: Your Strategy and Mental Game Guide!

Sometimes, no matter what you do, a solid hand won’t hold up – bringing a devastating loss at the poker table and to your psyche.

At other times, you’re dealt a massive hand that is up against an even stronger one – an unlikely scenario that turns into a significant loss.

These types of scenarios are “bad beats”, and every player will experience these at some point. They are part of the game.

However, it can be extremely frustrating when an opponent hits a two-outer or runner-runner cards to take what “should” have been your pot.

Continue reading to discover how to handle bad beats when they inevitably impact your game.

What is Bad Beat in Poker?

Bad beats imply that an opponent had to get especially lucky to win the pot. You or another opponent had a lead in a poker hand, and an unfortunate run of cards sent the pot to another player.

In many cases, our opponent may need to catch running cards on both the turn and river to make the best hand. If our opponent has a strong draw, such as an open-ender or flush draw, this play is not a bad beat. Drawing hands still have significant odds of winning and generally have enough equity to call.

Bad beats typically fall into two categories:

A player is an extremely high statistical favourite a hand but loses when an opponent hits one of the few cards needed to win.
A player loses with a powerful holding, relative to the board texture and the poker hand probabilities.

Cooler vs Bad Beat in Poker

Before moving forward, it’s essential to address another term sometimes interchanged with “bad beat”, and that word is cooler.

In poker, a cooler is a hand in which all the money makes it into the pot and seldom will either player get away from their hand.

Quite frequently, it involves two hands of extreme strength, like a “bad beat”.

The word “cooler” doesn’t focus on the result but more on the fact that both (or all) players have hands of extreme strength.

Examples of coolers might include:

AA vs KK, all-in preflop, 100bb deep (the two best Hold’em starting hands).
AK vs AQ all-in preflop between two short-stacked players in a tournament.
AK vs 22 on A-K-2 (flopped top two pair vs flopped bottom set).
KsQs vs As2s on Ts-Js-5s (flopped nut flush vs flopped 2nd nut flush).

Even though we don’t know the result of the individual hands, the extreme strength of each player’s hand makes it a cooler.

While coolers can frequently be bad beats, too, perhaps the poker term “bad beat” is a more apt description of the above scenarios following turn/river runouts:

AA vs KK: Board of 9c-3s-4h-2d-Ks, giving the KK a rivered 3-of-a-kind.
AK vs AQ: Where the AQ pairs up the Q, improving to win the hand.
AK vs 22: Where the AK turns or rivers another Ace/King after the A-K-2 flop, improving to a higher boat than the 2’s.
KsQs vs As2s: Board of Ts-3s-4h-Js-9s, where the KsQs spikes the 9s on the river, improving to a straight flush vs the turned nut flush.

Bad beats usually consider the result of the hand. The scenario typically involves a change of one hand being the equity favourite (for the hands involved) at least once.

Don’t get too hung up on the technicality of a bad beat or a cooler, though.

What’s more critical is how you recover from it right after, which we will discuss next.

How to Handle Bad Beats – Poker Strategy

One of the things it’s crucial to realise in poker is how things average out over the long run. The more volume you put in, the greater the likelihood of Aces vs Kings coolers.

What distinguishes the amateurs from the pros is how they handle tilt or rattled emotions from bad beats in the decision-making of future hands.

**How to Handle Bad Beats – Poker Strategy**

So, if you’re wondering how to handle a poker bad beat (or better yet, how to recover from a bad beat in poker), here are some strategies to consider:

Take a short break: If you know that you’re likely to punt off after a bad beat, assuming you’re in a cash game, sit out for an orbit. Blow off steam before returning more well-focused and re-grouped to the poker table.
Take a longer, extended break from poker: If you notice that you’re always getting emotionally tilted in poker games, step away for an extended period. Take your mind off the game and the continual emotional turmoil. Whether it’s just a few days or many weeks or months, poker will always be there in the future.
Study poker: Sometimes, resetting by reviewing the fundamentals is the best approach. Studying can calm you down and put you in a logical mindset, allowing you to make sound decisions.
Understanding variance: Bad beats are part of the variance of poker. Chances are a bad beat will eventually benefit you – it may be tough to realise this while you are the victim.

How to Handle Bad Beats – The Mental Game

Professional players realise that time is money. They can’t afford to take constant, extended breaks in a session to refocus. If they aren’t playing, they’re not making any money!

However, they also don’t want to lose money by playing while they’re still emotionally affected by a bad beat.

Note: The same thing goes for tournament players: Unless you bust from the tournament, you can’t just up and leave for a bit to get a handle on your emotions. You must keep playing and make sound, logical decisions if you’ve still got a stack. The tournament isn’t going to stop for your “emotional recovery” time.

It’s essential to know which tilt-free strategies will work best for you. However, you should also try to make long-lasting changes to avoid tilting.

Here are some longer-term mental strategies on how to deal with a bad beat in poker:

Practise meditation and yoga: These methods help you breathe and focus, channelling better thought processes and emotional control. These practices improve your health and mindset.
Use coaching or programs to help manage your tilt: Working with a mental game coach or mindset course can be beneficial for controlling your emotions. Check out this article by poker player/coach and writer, Jonathan Little, regarding Getting Rid of Tilt.
Get in the right mindset before a session: Listening to a “Primed Mind” track or putting in a study session can get you in the right mental state before a poker session. A strong mindset will reduce the likelihood of tilt. And it will minimise how hard tilt might potentially affect you when you experience a bad beat in poker.
Focus on the next hand: Concentrate on what you can control. Be ready for the next hand and put the bad luck in the rearview mirror.

Ultimately, it’s critical to know how to deal with a bad beat in poker so that it doesn’t negatively affect future hands in the session.

This knowledge will help you to keep a calm head and sound logic in your decisions moving forward.

Bad Beat Jackpot: Rewarding the Worst Bad Beats

Many cardrooms and even some online poker sites offer a bad beat jackpot (BBJ) to their players. How do you win a bad beat poker payout? By suffering a nasty bad beat that involves losing with a hand of a specific rank.

Though the qualifying hand will vary from place to place, the one most frequently used for the bigger bad beat jackpots is Quad Tens. This minimum means that if you lose with Quad Tens or better (and meet any other applicable criteria), you’ll win the bad beat poker payout!

Here’s a list of some of these additional criteria that may be used (depending on the casino):

Quads in a BBJ must be made using a pocket pair.
Both hole cards must be used in a player’s five-card BBJ hand
A specific dollar amount must be in the pot.

These criteria affect the odds of a poker bad beat jackpot and frequently lessen the frequency of the bad beat payout. Be sure to check with your poker room for any additional terms and conditions regarding BBJs.

The losing player doesn’t win the entire jackpot. The most common split of a BBJ will be as follows:

50% to the loser of the hand
25% to the winner of the hand
25% to the rest of the table

Two additional factors that may affect payout amounts and percentages include:

Room share, meaning all other players currently playing in the poker room but at another table will be paid a portion (i.e. a 40/20/20/20 split).
Re-seed amounts, meaning the casino reserves a percentage of the BBJ in advance to re-seed the next jackpot amount.

It’s essential to note that there will sometimes be “fixed” bad beat jackpots for losing with a particular hand (or better). These smaller bad beat jackpots often run concurrently with the progressive one.

(Depending on the strength of the losing hand, the player/table might either win the small fixed BBJ or the bigger progressive BBJ).

Occasionally, a fixed BBJ will replace a progressive one altogether and award the identical amounts to players regardless of the losing hand strength!

Typically, the mark for the qualifying hand is somewhere between Aces full of Tens or Aces full of Kings, and it may have a prize of approximately $25,000.

H2: Worst Bad Beats Ever

Especially in televised poker tournaments, you’ll undoubtedly see a fair number of bad beats. You’ll notice that some players lose their minds entirely and flip out (Phil Hellmuth, anyone?), and other players take the bad beat in stride and move on.

And yes – sometimes, it is going to be more difficult to swallow a bad beat based on the situation than others.

Look at the 2023 WSOP Main Event where pocket Nines got the best of pocket Aces on a 9♦️A♥️9♣️ flop!

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Televised bad beats put these unfortunate hands out there for all to see. Some of the worst bad beats live on infamy via YouTube.

Click here to check out 888poker’s list of the ugliest of ugly bad beats.

H2: Bad Beat Poker Conclusion

Bad beats in poker are just a normal part of the game. Developing emotional control is undoubtedly going to help you persevere through them and assist you in continuing to play your A-game immediately following.

Whether on a TV table or a regular table, bad beats are here to stay. Who knows? If the bad beat is severe enough, you may be rewarded with a jackpot!