Everyone loves a good story; the best stories feature a hero and villain. The hero and villain meet in some type of duel and usually the hero wins and some lesson can be taken. No matter what you do in life it can be featured in story form. The game of poker is no different. Each hand is a paragraph, from start to finish, leading to the ultimate conclusion. There are numerous heartwarming stories that can be told and undoubtedly ESPN will be featuring them during the World Series of Poker. However in poker, not every story is a good, some people simply tell boring and not very transcendent stories. At the end, all I can say is that I hate hearing bad beat stories.

Over a long enough time and enough hands, you will likely be able to say that you have seen it all, pocket aces cracked by seven-deuce, flush over flush, set over set, and on and on. Sometimes you are the one who deals the beat and other times you are on the short end of the stick. Bad Beats happen all the time in live and online poker and I see no reason to make players suffer with your suffering. Just as everyone loves a good story, everyone has a bad beat story. That is why I dislike them so much. I have a disdain for listening to other people whine and that is essentially what a bad beat story is. No matter how bad the beat was everyone believes there’s to be the worst beat in history, treating it as if it was the worst thing possible.

Sharing bad beat stories in a weird way may help breed a sense of camaraderie amongst fellow players. Some players who tell bad beat stories may also feel a catharsis by sharing, but one bad beat will never be the last as long as you play poker. In the end and back in the real world, there is nothing you can do but remember that it was just one hand, that you lost it and that the hand is over.