Running Bad in Poker

Running bad at your poker games, isn't that what all poker players hate most about the game? Yet we all know running bad is an unavoidable part of the poker game. For instance, running your Kings and Queens into Aces all the time, having the king high flush against the nut flush or being on the receiving end where your big hands get outdrawn by your opponent's lesser holdings on the turn or the river. I'm sure almost every poker player has gone through rough patches containing similar hands mentioned above.

I frequently get friends and fellow poker players coming up to me with their stories about their horrific bad runs and of how lucky their opponents are running against them. I find myself doing the same whenever I start dropping huge sums of money in my games. It was only during one of my conversations with my friend, a high stakes omaha player who knows his stuff well when he brought up a point which made me re-think about the loosely and commonly used phrase, "why do I run so bad."

So it was one of those days where I was giving one of whining speeches to my friend when he interrupted me midway through my speech. He said, "look Jason, have you ever stopped for a moment and look back at all these losing days which you've had and pondered were you really running bad or were you just playing bad?"

Those remarks really struck me in my face at that point of time. And looking back at all those losing sessions, I realized that there was indeed a couple sessions where I simply got tilted after a few bad beats and thereafter started playing bad unknowingly and dropped more money in obvious bad spots.

These days I tend to avoid getting into such situations once more and I pay more attention to rectifying my leaks in my game instead of always pushing the blame on other reasons whenever I have bad sessions.

The point, which I am trying to illustrate here, is that as poker players, we must always have the humility to readily admit to playing badly ourselves instead of always pushing the blame on simply running bad whenever we have losing sessions. I think this convenient excuse of running badly is a common bad trait of many poker players. Part of it is down to the inflated ego of all these poker players, which I admit that I am often guilty of as well.

Admitting your own mistakes and flaws to your peers is never an easy thing to do. But it is only through admitting our own playing flaws that we can correct these leaks and bring our games up to the next level. So next time when you start using the phrase, "oh, I'm running bad!" think again, were you really on a bad run or were you simply playing badly?

Article by: Jason "asiangravy" Samsonov

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