No matter how good a poker player you are, luck is always gong to have some say in how things will turn out. It can be hugely frustrating when you know that you’ve made all the right moves, all of your opponents have done what you wanted them to, but somehow you’ve been outdrawn.

I was playing a hand last week and was dealt pocket Kings, so I raised ten times the big blind to scare out all of the mediocre hands. Three other online poker players called, and I drew a third King on the flop, which came out an 8 of Spades-9 of Spades-King of Hearts. I chased out two more players with another raise, and went heads up with a player that I knew was a loose aggressive player. The turn was a 6 of Spades, and after he checked, I put my opponent on a pair of Kings and put him all in. He called, shrugged, and turned over his King-10 unsuited. I was mentally raking in my chips when the river showed a 7, giving my opponent a straight, and crippling my stack.

It’s tough to be outdrawn, because you can do ten things right, but if one thing (the one thing you can’t control when you play poker online) goes wrong, all of your hard work, not to mention your chips, goes down the drain.