TGJB

This is a very good point. To illustrate it further, a poker bad beat is in some ways like a bridge jumper complaining that he suffered a bad beat. Maybe he was 98% likely to win and he was betting $10,000 to win $500. Maybe the bet made sense....in the long haul, he will profit. However, when the few times come in that he loses, can he fairly say he suffered a bad beat? I mean they go to the trouble of running the races for some reason, right? They go to the trouble of dealing a river card, right? It is called gambling, isn't it? Whenever there is a bridge jumping situation, I always look to see if there is a reason to think the horse might not run. I have cashed some huge show bets as a result (I recall my best was at Belmont one July. It was a sprint stakes, something like the True North. I think Richter Scale was a prohibitive favorite in a short field. There was obviously goign to be a huge negative show pool. I even forgot who I won with, but I had big show bet on a horse that paid something like $43.60 to show in the five horse field when Richter Scale ran out like it looked like he could -- it would have been one of those magical moments in the old days when you used to hear -- "prices okay!")

I realize the bridge jumper example might be an exaggeration, but what the poker bad beat guys are complaining about is when they are getting even money or 2 or maybe 3 to 1 when their chances of winning might be say 90%. Yes, they are getting a great bet, but in the few cases (10%) when the other guy wins, are they justified in complaining it is a bad beat? I mean if there is no chance for the other guy to win, there is no game at all. All games need a little bit of uncertainty to even exist, to then complain about that modicum of uncertainty seems a bit contradictory.

Granted, that modicum of uncertainty hitting at a bad time (WSOP or your shot at a million dollar pick six) can be very unfortunate, but this whole debate started with poker players (e.g. a Daily RACING Form Columnist) saying that poker bad beats are worse than horseracing bad beats. In the end, I do not know if I even want to win such an argument. I mean what do you win for it? Nothing! The knowledge that you are a bigger loser?

But, recall the title of this thread -- Pissed at Crist. This whole thing started because a poker column in the horseracing newspaper had the temerity to tell the horseplaying audience that their bad beats aren't really bad beats and that poker players have it much worse. Has anybody read Fornatale's column? I mean what did the horseplaying public do to deserve this assault in the Daily Racing Form. It would be one thing if these columns actually wrote about poker and helped people's games, but these columns are embarrassing and not up to the standards we should expect in the DRF. The first three can be summarized easily -- don't go on tilt after a bad beat (and in Fornatale's case, "to all you horseplayers, you do not know what a bad beat is anyway, so it really shouldn't trouble you anyway").