The river card! Does that happen to you too?

Hi all,

If it often happens that you are way ahead on the flop, the river also benefits you and the last card on the turn screws up your hand and you lose. This happens to me very often as a winner in such a situation that I benefit from it and more often that I am really devastated and lost.
I'm looking forward to your comments

This definitely sounds like poker to me

AA Miragino AA said:

Hi all,

If it often happens that you are way ahead on the flop, the river also benefits you and the last card on the turn screws up your hand and you lose. This happens to me very often as a winner in such a situation that I benefit from it and more often that I am really devastated and lost.
I'm looking forward to your comments

Click to expand...

I take it easy – these situations are just part of the game. To offset this unpleasant factor, I play 4 to 6 tables at the same time. Just try playing more tables if it's not a problem for you.

AA Miragino AA said:

Hi all,

If it often happens that you are way ahead on the flop, the river also benefits you and the last card on the turn screws up your hand and you lose. This happens to me very often as a winner in such a situation that I benefit from it and more often that I am really devastated and lost.
I'm looking forward to your comments

Click to expand...

Of course

Villans have outs too...

But as soon you familiarize yourself how to cope with that your life will get better.

Its one of the most gutting feelings to get an all in AK vs AQ and the flop comes AKQ, turn 6 and river Q. oh man its bad.
Or AK vs A10 the flop comes JK9, the turn 7 and the river a Q.
I think preflop all ins are usually a bad idea. I think in the past 2 weeks I have had pocket aces 5-7 times, and all but 1 of those preflop all ins was lost. Getting it in AA vs KK vs JJ and the jacks keep hitting a jack...

First, it’s important to separate two things: the feeling of a sequence of hands and the actual frequency of events. When you often find yourself in situations like “I’m ahead on the flop → the turn ruins everything,” the mind tends to remember only the painful outcomes. The winning lines of the same type are usually taken for granted and quickly forgotten. This is called negativity bias.
Second, poker’s structure itself explains a lot:
On the flop, equity often looks like a “big advantage,” but in reality it’s more like 55/45 or 60/40, not 90/10
A single card on the turn or river can often change everything because ranges are still wide
The more hands you play, the more often you will see these “turnarounds,” simply because volume makes them inevitable
A simple example: if you have 65% equity on the flop, you will still lose around 35% of the time by the river. This is not a “bad run” — it’s just normal math.
Now the important part about your feeling of “I lose more often and feel drained.” Usually two things are mixed here:
Variance (normal) — unavoidable swings
Emotional reaction (controllable) — fatigue and tilt amplify the perception of losses
If after such hands you “break down,” the issue is not that poker is breaking you, but that each individual cooler is being treated as a judgment of your play, even though it’s just variance noise.
Practically, this is not fixed by “mental toughness” alone, but structurally:
evaluate sessions, not individual hands (or at least 1–2k hands)
focus on decisions, not results
accept in advance that even with perfect play you will often lose with strong equity advantages

AA Miragino AA said:

Hi all,

If it often happens that you are way ahead on the flop, the river also benefits you and the last card on the turn screws up your hand and you lose. This happens to me very often as a winner in such a situation that I benefit from it and more often that I am really devastated and lost.
I'm looking forward to your comments

Click to expand...

Sorry to play the senior teacher but your post makes no sense.

The turn card is dealt before the river card.

This situation happens to all players.
Depending on the type of flop cards (wet, dynamic, well connected) you have to adjust your play.

Generally, good or bad news happens in River. Lately, I've been losing a lot. I even thought I had modified the algorithm to make it happen, but I watched some big tournaments on YouTube and the same thing always happens. As someone said above, that's poker.