Term in poker
In poker, bad beat is a subjective term for a hand in which a player with what appear 🤶 to be strong cards nevertheless loses. It most often occurs where one player bets the clearly stronger hand and their 🤶 opponent makes a mathematically poor call that wins with any subsequent dealing to complete the hand.
In pure mathematical terms a 🤶 one-outer can be considered a pure bad beat, however there is no consensus among poker players as to what else 🤶 exactly constitutes a bad beat and often players will disagree about whether a particular hand was a bad beat. A 🤶 few examples are: quads over full house, quads over quads, straight flush over quads, small full house vs. bigger full 🤶 house or better.
Types of bad beats [ edit ]
Virtually any hand that looked like a favorite to win can end 🤶 up losing as more cards are dealt, but bad beats usually involve one of two not mutually exclusive scenarios:
The player 🤶 who wins on a bad beat is rewarded for mathematically unsound play. Calling a bet despite having neither the best 🤶 hand nor the right pot odds or implied odds to call, then winning anyway, is characteristic of this type of 🤶 bad beat. It can also involve the inferior hand catching running cards when it requires two cards in a row 🤶 to come from behind to win the pot. For example, catching cards on both the turn and the river in 🤶 Texas hold 'em that complete a straight or flush.
A very strong hand loses to an even stronger one, better known 🤶 as "cooler". This type of beat occurs with some frequency in movies. In the films The Cincinnati Kid and Casino 🤶 Royale, The Kid and Le Chiffre, respectively, each lose with a full house to a straight flush. In this situation, 🤶 it is possible that both players have played their cards well, and avoiding the bad beat could not have been 🤶 achieved without committing a mistake.
Reacting to bad beats [ edit ]
A bad beat can be a profound psychological blow, and 🤶 can easily lead to a player going on tilt. Professional player Phil Hellmuth, among others, is notorious for his pronounced 🤶 reactions to bad beats. However, suffering a bad beat means that the losing player was "getting the money in good" 🤶 and in most instances would win by playing the same hand the same way. Thus, the more stoic poker players 🤶 accept bad beats as an unpleasant but necessary drawback to a tactic that works the vast majority of the time.
Bad 🤶 beats online [ edit ]
In online poker rooms, bad beats often lead to accusations that the random number generator is 🤶 "rigged", even though such beats also occur in offline games. Many online poker rooms post statistical data to demonstrate the 🤶 randomness of the hands generated.[1] In online poker games players have an opportunity to play in "bad beat" tables where 🤶 the player who has the best losing hand receives an accumulated prize pool. An additional amount of rake is taken 🤶 from each hand to fund the jackpot. The largest online jackpot to date was €1.25 million, hit in July 2011 🤶 with €443,000 going to the loser of the hand.[2]
Players are statistically more likely to experience bad beats online, since playing 🤶 using a computer allows for more hands played per hour. Also, online players may play multiple cash game tables and/or 🤶 tournaments at the same time, also increasing the frequency of hands dealt. Also, tells are rendered moot, so players are 🤶 incapable of reading clues such as body language in aid of deriving the strength of an opponent's hand. Finally, online 🤶 poker games (especially freeroll tournaments) are far more accessible to the average player who, being average, is less likely to 🤶 be knowledgeable regarding the techniques of the game, in turn making it more likely they will bet from the gut 🤶 or intuition rather than experience.
Bad beat jackpot [ edit ]
A bad beat jackpot is a prize that is paid when 🤶 a sufficiently strong hand is shown down and loses to an even stronger hand held by another player.[3] Not all 🤶 poker games offer bad beat jackpots, and those that do have specific requirements for how strong a losing hand must 🤶 be to qualify for the jackpot. For example, the losing hand may be required to be four-of-a-kind or better. There 🤶 may be additional requirements as well. For example, in Texas hold 'em there is usually a requirement that both hole 🤶 cards play in both the losing and winning hands, or that where a full house is the minimum (usually aces 🤶 full of jacks or higher), both hole cards must be used to make the three-of-a-kind in the full house.
Bad beat 🤶 jackpots are usually progressive, often with a small rake being taken out of each pot to fund the jackpot (in 🤶 addition to the regular rake). When a jackpot is won, it is usually split among all players sitting at the 🤶 table at the time of the bad beat with the losing hand getting the largest share, followed by the winning 🤶 hand, and all the other players dividing the remainder. Generally, only the best losing hand is eligible to win the 🤶 largest share, even if another hand would also qualify.
Specific rules, collections, payout percentages, and amounts vary greatly from one casino 🤶 or cardroom to the next, and are sometimes changed.
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
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