Am I playing wrong?

[Alec]

I’ve been playing super tight poker. Like 10% of hands, conscious of my position, rarely bluffing. I’ll have a good pair with a kicker on the flop (pair of tens with Ace kicker, for example) and then wind up getting fleeced by players who hit their pair on the river (King on the river to make a pair, for example). But my bets outsize their pot equity and yet they keep calling. Keeps happening to me, like way more than it should. The odds just aren’t there for these players to call me and then they do, all the way to final showdown, and they beat me on the river with 12% odds of hitting.

Am I playing wrong or do the Poker Gods just hate me?

FYI: this is mostly in online games, but happens to me in tournaments quite often as well

[KitsuNoir]

Not really enough information to tell. There are a few possibilities:

*) Confirmation bias — We tend to remember bad outcomes and forget all the times the fish call when they don’t have the equity and you win.

*) Runbad — It happens and there’s nothing you can do about it other than play through it while satisfying yourself you’re making good decisions regardless of the outcome of that particular play. Stay off tilt. If they’re really aming bad calls without the equity to justify it, you’ll win as surely as the Roulette Wheel wins for the house.

*) The Poker Gods hate you.

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