So you’ve been playing cards for a while now. You’ve paid your dues at the Holdem Tables either online or in live games somewhere local. Maybe you’re a regular at the local card room. They’ve probably even given you a nickname.

Point is, you’re not a newbie anymore. You’re a regular. A player. You’ve got some skills. You know it, and so do other people. You are a player with a decent overall win ratio. Not exactly ready for WSOP, but you can hold your own.

Lately though, it seems, you just can’t grab those monster pots like you used to. In fact, you hate to admit it, but you’re in a rut that is costing you money. Possibly even more than the dough you dropped on your ‘lessons’ when you started playing.

Bad beats. That’s all it is. If you’ve been playing Texas Holdem or any other flavor of Poker for any amount of time, you’ll have heard this term literally hundreds of times after playing for a while.

It’s a very common problem among midrange to semi advanced players, and it’s one that can sneak up on you, steal your wallet, and then convince you that none of it was your fault.

Are they really bad beats?

If you find yourself saying it fairly often, it’s time to ask yourself a tough question. When was the last time you analyzed your play?

When you find yourself tossing out that “bad beat” phrase fairly often, it’s time to step back and find out if the problem is really in your play. Often players that have been in the game for several months will hit a phase where they relax some of the stringent rules they set on themselves when they were much greener.

Of course, they know how to play NOW. They’ve been playing a long time.

Dangerous water to tread in, because it can be an indication that all of the basics you worked so hard to learn in the beginning are now being left at the door when you enter the card room.

An interesting pattern begins to emerge almost every time in this phase of a long-term player’s skill development. I like to call this the ‘bad beat seat’. Which is just a mixture of the phrases - “bad beat’ and “bad seat”. I combined them one day when I heard two players that I’ve played with for a long time use them almost simultaneously.

After watching them play only a couple of hands though, it was obvious that neither was the reason for their losses. They had reverted back to bad play, rookie moves, and flat out tells written all over their faces. They had forgotten everything they had worked so hard to learn, and instead of looking at how to fix it, they decided to revert back to the beginner’s line of thinking and blaming the cards or their seat for losing.

Adding salt to the wound, once you start to consider yourself a “player”, you are usually willing to risk a little more money. Which can be financially painful if you happen to also be in this denial phase.

Bad beats are rare. They really are. When is the last time you were at a table and saw a single out straight flush beat? Doesn’t happen very often, that’s for sure. If you’ve been playing for quite a while and are telling yourself that it was just a bad night, full of bad beats, you’re in one serious rut, one that can only be cured by you.

It’s not bad beats, it’s not bad cards. It’s laziness. It’s cocky and lazy card play that can cost you some serious money.

How do you fix it? Texas Holdem is definitely not a team sport. No coach to give you a pep talk, no team mates to tell you when you need to get it together. Just the opposite. Your card room ‘buddies’ are glad to see you in this space. It means that they can take advantage of it and pull some cash out of you.

So YOU have to be the coach. You have to give yourself the pep talk. Most importantly, you have to get out the mental playbook and go back to what you learned that brought you this far.

When you get tired of losing, and you get tired of blaming everything and everyone but the real culprit, you will find yourself at this turning point. This is when average to good players can become great players. Because you can now step across that line and move into the advanced lessons still ahead.

However, without the basic arsenal fully embedded in the core of your being, you’ll never achieve anything above mediocre status. You’ll find yourself in that same crummy card room twenty years from now, asking the dealer if you can change your seat.

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