Playing seven card stud poker means that the hand that you decide to play is totally within your hand, with no community cards your holding the only cards that you can play.
Playing the tables at any online poker room that offers seven card stud will always leave you feeling like you have been cheated out of a powerful hand, with some donkey staying in the betting rounds only to hit the one card that they need to take yours down on the river.
At this point, almost all players shout and scream that their computer screens or if the game is a live game, start to question the opponent on their skills as a player.
Once that is over and done with, players tend to then switch to one of two playing styles – Aggressive or Defensive.
If you’re the kind of player who tries to play any hand that has a pair once your holding 5 cards and you think that by the fact that players around you can’t see your hidden cards so you have the power, you in for a shock once you start to make your bets, seeing your bankroll drop significantly.
Playing in the mind set that your playing the fine line between maniac and aggressive is one of the worst things that any poker player can do, regardless of the variant of poker that they are playing.
Play like this is only going to make you more susceptible to bad beats, making your frame of mind one that is going to leave you wishing that you had just walked away from the table, costing you money with each bad call that you make.
Okay, so how should you handle that the opponent has just gone fishing, paying off for them on the river?
As textbook as it sounds, leaving the past in the past is the best piece of advice that can be given in this situation.
Playing poker is something that should be done with full concentration on the hand that your holding at that moment in time, not the hand that just cost you half your stack or the hand that you just doubled up on.
Take each hand as it comes, playing them differently.
I say play them differently as they are two totally separate hands, so playing it as if it was the game that you have just won or lost will leave you open to been exploited by a large number of good stud poker players.
If you find that you are failing to let the past be the past then its time that you consider moving away from the table, it doesn’t have to be long nor does it mean that you have to leave the table or tournament that you are playing, just sit out a couple of hands and take a walk away from the computer for a moment.
You will see that so many poker articles like this tell you that walking away from the table is the best method for you to regain your cool but this is very much a personal preference.
If you can regain your frame of mind so that you are 100% concentrated on the game as it comes round then do that but if you find that you are quickly falling back into the wrong mentality its time to concede that we might just be right.
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