You've sat in traffic for what seems like an eternity. What is supposed to be a fast- moving freeway has been converted into a parking lot, and you've held the brake pedal for so long that your foot is starting to pain you. Finally, you see flashing lights of police cars and tow trucks ahead of you.
As you creep past the accident along the shoulder of the road, you peer over to see the remnants of the accident. What you see shocks you. Prepared to see nasty carnage and twisted metal, you see a couple of cars involved in a slight fender-bender. While you should be relieved that nobody was seriously hurt, you can't help but be unnerved. If you sat all of that time in snarled traffic, you want a story to tell about the destruction you witnessed. It's disappointing and difficult to psychologically justify a long wait for an unremarkable minor traffic snafu.
We tend toward a similar mindset at the poker table. After one of my trips to the World Series, my home game buddies wanted to hear details of the cash games and tournaments that I played in and watched. When talking about one of the tournaments where I faded out before making the money, my buddies pushed for more information. I explained that there really was not too much to talk about. After playing well out of the gates, I went card dead. I stole some blinds to buy time as but it was a losing battle.
The blinds swallowed me up as the cards stayed cold. They gasped when I explained that I could not recall the exact cards played on my final fateful hand. It was standard poker all around, and I could not recall any remarkable hands at all from anyone at the table. No huge bluffs were exposed, no bad beats occurred.
Their disappointment was palpable. They were anticipating that I would wow them with some horrific bad beat stories. They wanted to hear that my aces were bested by 7-2 off-suit, or that some lucky donkey had caught a one-outer on the river to send me packing while the railbirds cooed. Instead, I simply had the same boring old poker tale that we've all experienced countless times.
While most of us put on a false front and pretend that we find bad beat stories amateurish, in reality most of us use them as an emotional crutch and a motivational tool. Just like we have a deep-rooted desire to see a horrible wreck after sitting on the highway, we also have an odd attraction to bad beats.
Watching them befall others is as much of a sport as watching for accidents in NASCAR or violent punches and kicks in mixed martial arts. I remember listening to the departed three-time bracelet winner John Bonetti, who could always weave an interesting true story, tell about quads going down in flames to straight flushes. While we play to win, we also play to experience these exciting unexpected moments.
When bad beats hit us, there is no doubt that it hurts badly. They haunt us as our minds dance with "what ifs" and "should haves." Still, in a twisted way we relish this anguish. It's common for poker players to see themselves as unlucky martyrs. We like being able to lean on bad beat stories to mask our losses, and the psychological insecurity that goes with them. We find comfort in being part of the fraternity of poker players who can tell true tales of poker carnage.
Of course, bad beats are best experienced when watching someone else get torn up in the proverbial meat grinder. As much as we try to deny it, we enjoy seeing bad beats and telling bad beat stories. We secretly like to see twisted metal after sitting in traffic, and we secretly like bad beats at the poker felt.
Now go make it happen.
John Carlisle is a National Certified Counselor with a Master's degree in Counseling Psychology from West Virginia University. Contact John at carlisle14@hotmail.com.
