Admittedly, my title this week might seem a little deceptive. Although it sounds like it, this article is not going to discuss the odds of the various bad beats you might encounter at a poker table, or the chance of that one outer spiking your hand on the river.

Rather, I'm going to take a different approach. I'm going to talk about the importance of bad beats to poker. Specifically, I'm going to talk about how important it is to your long-term winning rate that you take the occasional bad beat. Yes, you heard me right. You need take some bad beats once in a while to win at poker.

Certainly, the bad beat is the most painful part of poker. Well, I take that back. Bad beats are the second most painful thing in poker; listening to other people's bad beat stories is the most painful thing about poker.

You are probably wondering how suffering from a bad beat actually makes you a winner. Remember, a bad beat might cause you to loose in any one particular session, but to win in the long haul they are needed. Why?

Poker is not like chess, where the best player always wins. Poker is a game of statistical edges and betting in favorable spots. The general idea is if you can play a disciplined game, and get your money in good spots, you should win in the long run.

Conversely, if you always put your money in bad, (this means you are always betting when the odds are against you) you will loose in the long run. However, luck, or the short term statistical deviation can intervene in any one particular hand and make the good player loose and the bad player win. A real pain, right? Think about that for a second.

Imagine if there was no luck. What would happen? The bad player would go broke a few times, realize he/she can never win, and stop playing for money. The good player would also be out in the cold, because there would be no one to win money from. Thus, you need to have the bad player get lucky in order for him/her to think he/she can win at the game and keep playing.

This raises the questions: how should I handle my bad beat, and how should I treat the person who gave me the bad beat? If you have the bad luck to suffer a bad beat, suffer it with dignity.

Stay cool, calm, and collected. Do not loose your temper. Focus on your strategy and the next hand. If the beat was particularly ugly, or you feel yourself getting angry, take a break from the game. Walk around, get a drink and get some fresh air. Don't play again until you are in control and your anger has subsided. There is an old saying in poker: don't get angry because when you do, you just get angry at your bankroll.

So how should you treat the person who gave you the bad beat? Politely and respectfully. Compliment them on winning the hand. Say "good hand". Laugh along with them. Under no circumstances should you curse at them or berate them. This will only chase them away.

The object is to have the bad players enjoy playing with you, not running away from you. Who do you want to be at your table? Only serious, solid, aggressive players? Remember what Mike Caro says: "A laughing table is a loose table".

Even worse is when someone starts telling the bad player all the things he/she did wrong in the hand. Giving free poker lessons to the person you are trying to beat is just plain stupid. That's another important poker saying: "don't educate the fish".