Recovering From a Losing Hand in Online Poker

Something that I see regularly when playing tournaments online is players who build a decent chip stack, lose one hand, be it to a bad beat or just a better hand at the wrong time, and then they proceed to get desperate to replenish their chips. I do not call it 'tilt' although it may be close to that, but what usually happens is that players will start to push too much with marginal hands because they are worried about the loss they just had. In every tournament I have ever played that I have won or made the money in, there has been a loss that I have had to recover from. Never will you run through an entire tournament without losing a confrontation along the way. Learning how to deal with this is the key to playing successful tournament poker.

For example, last night I was playing a $ 33k KO tournament and the bigger stacks at the table were in the $ 16k- $ 22k range. Two players to my right got into a hand all-in. The bigger stack had 19k and the smaller 7k. The big stack had QQ and the small had KK. The K's held up and the big stack went from $ 19k to $ 12k chip stack. Keep in mind the blinds were only $ 200- $ 400 at this point with no antes.

To make a long story short, this larger big stack starting bullying trying to pick up enough hands to make up for his loss. I picked up AK and took most of his remaining chips when he got carried away with AJ. I had position, I was playing fairly tight, we should never have gotten that involved with AJ. But, he was still smarting from the previous loss and I was able to exploit that.

You will see these types of scenarios online all the time, especially in tournaments. If you can exploit it in another player when you pick up a big hand against them, fine, but the main thing is to avoid letting it happen to you. Losses will happen, keep playing your game and you will build your chip stack back up. If you let it get in your head, your tournament will be over quickly.

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Source by Chris Wilcox