disclaimer: Long, boring, probably pointless post. Deals very little to do with poker theory and has a little to do with frame of mind and sklansky-type thinking, possibly. If you're pressed for time, skip this one.
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There are some elements of this thread that are similar to one I made a while back, but I'm going to try to take it a slightly different direction. I have my own thoughts on this, but I'm interested in hearing what others have to say.
For a quick setup, you open raise to $35 with red aces ($1k effective stacks), from MP, button calls, BB calls. Flop comes down Q76, 2 toned with a red flush draw. BB leads, you raise, button folds, BB pushes, you cry and call, hoping to see some kind of draw or overplayed AQ (even 76 wouldn't be too bad). Anyway, you turn top set, and the river is an innocent black 4. Wheeee! BB tables 53 of hearts for the combo draw that spiked on the river.
You start breathing extremely heavy, your heart rate triples, and your head is in a state of mind not unlike what it would be if you were in a fight, road raging, etc. Anyway, finally the steam clears up and you finally get around to IM'ing the hand history to your best internet buddy. He will (correctly) say that there's not a whole lot you can do about it, you got it in with the best of it, etc. You should be pleased with your play in the hand and move on to the next one (I agree with this).
Now, backtrack a tad. Same hand, same action. BB bet/3bet's allin on a Q76 2 toned board. You call with aces. You turn top set, and the river is a black 4. This time BB tables a set of 7's. Now, if you are anything like me, the reaction goes something like this: "HAHAHHAHAHAHAHA" *claps hands really hard* *clenches fist in a victory solute*. Then I giggle a little bit and laugh some more about how pissed the guy on the other side of the monitor must be.
Now, people are overwhelmingly less likely to share hands where they make a big suckout on the other guy then when they get bad beated themselves, but if you were to show the same friend this hand, they would probably just laugh and say "nice one" or something. From a poker standpoint, they'd probably just say be happy and learn from it (pretend that the call is a very marginal one at best-- this one obviously depends on the other guy's range).
So we have 2 situations here, one where we get our money in with the best of it in a marginal situation but get bad beated. We are supposed to be happy here. The other situation is that we get our money in with the worst of it, and we put the bad beat on the other guy. We are also supposed to be pleased here.
What gives? Is this just a way of making people feel better about themselves?
