blonde poker forum

No, I am not talking about "getting lucky" and outdrawing someone

Or even good luck of running AA into KK (etc)

I am talking of the "hidden" luck that most people ignore.

Funny enough, Danny Samson was talking to me about this subject just last wednesday, he got table moved straight into the BB 3 times in a row which effectively cost him his tournament.

The same thing happened to me in Torquay this weekend. Having just posted the BB and SB , our table broke and I drew a new seat - straight into the BB again. Not too bad you would think, but in late stages of a comp (ie blinds 1500 3000 and running ante of 300) that means 10200 in blinds in 4 hands.

I hadnt given this much thought before, until now.

I was always a "non" believer of the "luck evens itself out" theory - reasons? well the odds say you will win as many 50/50's as you loose, BUT the luck factor STILL exists, because the ones you win may not be as important as the ones you loose.

eg : you play 100 x 50/50's . 50 are early on in tournaments, 50 are late on in tournaments. Odds say you win 50%, but if the 50% you win are all in early stages of a tourney and the 50% you loose are all in late stages of a tourney - Although the odds have evened themselves out, the luck has not.

So, what %age of Poker would you say is Luck and why?

(This is not a winge post, just an interesting debate)

Well I'm lucky enough to be playing instead of working.

Nice quote - I like it  ;tightend;

in a comp last week I got moved to table balance as it reached my BB three times in one level, went 30 mins without posting a blind!

Which is why in tournament poker you want to try avoid taking 50/50 shots especially if your tournament life depends on it.

As for the rest such as the seat redraws i believe that if you play enough tournaments and you are a good enough player to counteract any such "bad luck" then it isn't much of a factor in the long run - afterall how many times does your table get broken just before the blinds come to you only to find that when you move to the new table you miss a hand because you've been moved into where the small blind was?

a quote i have used a few times on blonde in the past when it comes to talking about luck in poker.......

Sklansky took a quote from Bobby Baldwin just after the main event of the 1981 WSOP main event and interpreted it as follows:

"expert players do not rely on luck, they are at war with it. They use their skills to minimize luck as much as possible. They figure they're getting the best of it, and they leave the lucky draws to their weaker opponents. To the extent that they are getting the best of it, they will win more than they lose. Over the long run everybody gets the same proportion of good and bad cards, of winning and losing hands. Beginning poker players rely on big hands and lucky draws. Expert poker players use their skills to minimize their losses on the bad hands and maximize their profits on the big hands. They also are able to judge better than others when a big hand is not the best hand and when a small hand is the best hand."

i guess the same would apply to good and bad luck situations such as seat redraws

Three opportunities to resteal - lucky man.

I have never been lucky...every single win has just been skill. Also I have never stranded myself on a beach in Spain. I am seven stone in weight and only five foot four tall.

I used to think about the luck like this post but let's be honest all of these things balance out over the long run. I have been lucky in poker in the trips and money I have won etc. but I have been luckier in the fact that it has brought into a world of truly interesting and varied people outside of my normal circle.

We the players are so lucky, we joust, laugh, compete, moan but at the end of it all share a common experience and just occassionally get proven right.

nice post Snat

People seem to talk about luck as being "good" only. However any game that uses a randomly delivered method of distribution means every hand is luck.

It was good luck that I got KK pre flop and my opponent got AQ. It was bad luck that the flop came A72. The 50/50 rule is Bad vs Good and if that is taken to the evening out of hands then you should in the example above have 50/50 early on and 50/50 late on.  Of course the way the good luck is played (ie maximise the win/know your opponent etc) against the way bad luck is played (ie don't chase/fish/continue in a pot that looks lost) helps a bit to swing luck (whether bad or good) in your favour.

But hey why listen to me I still have to work to fund my 'Hobby'  ;djinn;

Over time, good & bad luck will even out. It just will.

Much luck is in the eye of the beholder.

Last week, in 4 consecutive Live Tourneys, I had KK bust by 77 (Final, but cash-bubbled), KKK beat by 9-T, flopped Broadway straight beat by Q-8, & A-A by 4-4.

In EVERY case I was the lower of the two stacks, so the problem was not the beat, but my earlier play. (Though the Broadway straight happened after 7 hands of a £300 Freeze).

And the A-A by 4-4. Well I was comped into the tourney, so saved £550.

And the other two? I was playing with Bankroll I'd won in other Tourneys, & nobody ever won a Tourney - NOBODY - without a few strokes of luck.

Look wider. Luck is not just the bad beat we remember, it's everything. Anyone who can afford to play Poker is lucky to start with.

Forget luck. it will happen, like rainy days, & there's nowt you can do about it. It's part of life, & art of poker. Chess is largely luck-free. We choose to play poker instead.

Great thread Paul, nice one.

I posted 6 blinds in 7 hands on blonde poker the other day at 1000/2000 blinds,

SXXt out of luck that night I telll ya!

Saying that, I was playing a satellite to another satellite not that long ago and was moved from UTG to the CO on the bubble, if I hadn't have been moved, I wouldn't have made it through bar some luck on the flop, but thankfully it didn't come to that.

I guess it evens out but I think it's more your ability to cope with it that matters too.  If you shrug it off, then I think you suffer less, but if you start getting down and moaning then it's likely to happen again and effect you even more.   You need to be in the right frame of mind.

It's all karma man.  Stay cool

Silo Graham get's it spot on.

I guess it evens out but I think it's more your ability to cope with it that matters too.  If you shrug it off, then I think you suffer less, but if you start getting down and moaning then it's likely to happen again and effect you even more.   You need to be in the right frame of mind.

It's all karma man.  Stay cool

I think he was just using 50/50's as an example, the same could apply to 80/20's.  If you're unfortunate enough to lose ur 20% worth of them when deep. And winning your 80% worth in early situations.  Again, the ''luck'' wont have evened out.  Just the ''odds''.

But i think you should compare your early 80/20's with other early 80/20's.  And late 80/20's with other late 80/20's.  And surely in the long run, they will even out by themselves.

Every time someone gets lucky, his opponent must, by definition, get unlucky, and vice versa.

 

I think its true that most people believe it evens itself out over time.

I also think alot of players only remember their BAD luck, not the good.

How quickly people forget previous blonde bashes................

 ;whistle;

Luck is something winning poker players should embrace, though I like alot of poker players get annoyed when "luck" is going against me. If there wasn't a certain amount of luck in poker, it would be a damn sight harder to make any money out of the game. As the lesser players would go busto extremely quickly and get disheartened by their lack of success, whereas if the lesser player believes that he/she can win on any one day, they are likely to keep playing in that vain hope.

For example I have heard a top player (I think it was Todd Brunson) who said the top cash players loved when a player got lucky in tournament and then sat down at the cash tables. How much of Jamie Golds 6m is going to end up back in the poker community quite alot i would imagine.

i'll remind you of this next time you start venting about bad beats on your blog............

;D

Very true.

But I look beyond each "piece" of luck, good or bad. If I had been operating with a deeper stack, I'd have survived. And my stack was shallow because......any number of reasons, some luck, & some skill. But I (almost) ALWAYS operate with a small stack, so it's a skill failure on my part, & the "bad luck" that muffed me was just the final act of something which began the very hand the tourney started - the fact that I don't accumulate enough chips generally. That's nowt to do with luck.

If I get my Aces or Kings bust & it's no more irritating than a fly on a cows arse. What IS irritating is getting my chips in when I'm behind. If I go in ahead, thats all that matters, and I don't care one iota if I get muffed, because thats the nature of the game. I've minimised the luck by going in ahead, I can do no more.

To win a tournament, it helps to get your share of the luck at the right time.  It then helps if you have the skill to make  the most of it (by having a decent stack and for still being in the tournament to 'receive' the luck, and for making sure you get the most chips out of it as possible).

Tom (http://www.blondepoker.com/blondepedia/blondepedia_view_player.php?player_id=1138) McEvoy (http://www.blondepoker.com/blondepedia/blondepedia_view_player.php?player_id=1138) has written a few things about this, such as "the more skill you have, the more chance you will have to get lucky" and also something about his mission in a tournament is to get into the positions to be lucky (can't remember exactly what this quote is, but that sort of sums it up).

So my feelings are that luck and skill aren't in conflict, but it's a skill to use luck/chance to your maximum advantage.

Don't know if Louis Pasteur played cards, but he may have when he said: "Chance favours the prepared mind." 

yeah if we were immortal everyone who plays the WSOP ME will get as lucky as Jamie Gold. Otherwise...

Exactly, although chance is completely neutral in terms of who it happens to, there are those who can make more out of it when it comes their way.  Was Jamie (http://www.blondepoker.com/blondepedia/blondepedia_view_player.php?player_id=839) Gold (http://www.blondepoker.com/blondepedia/blondepedia_view_player.php?player_id=839) the luckiest person at the WSOP last year?  Possibly he was.  But there were probably hundreds of others who had the same amount of good fortune as him, but couldn't make it favour them as well as he did.

Still doesn't answer what percentage is luck, and what percentage is skill - and you can't within without both.

Lots of good quotes about luck:

"I am a strong believer in luck and I find the harder I work the more I have of it."     Benjamin Franklin

I remember reading something written by a statistician a while ago, saying that in fact the numbers are not in fact large enough to even luck out in a lifetime, so some players will in fact benefit from good or suffer from bad luck even in the long run. I'll rack my brain to think where I got that.

Why does good and bad luck have to even itself out over a relatively small period of time?

This is what i really find strange about poker players talking about luck. When they say it will even out out eventually.

Yes, but who says it has to be in 5/10/15/20 tournaments time? IMO luck if indeed it does exist can take a hell of a long time to even out, maybe years or even decades so honestly i think luck plays a much less significant role than people think.

What does play a HUGE impact on a players results over the long term is their psychological response to a so called "bad run". As TK said in his diary and i paraphrase "i went through a period where i was hitting flops, my bluffs were getting through and my my showdowns were holding".

Was it luck that was winning you those pots/tournaments/cash or was it the high confidence levels you had gained from a period of poker where your game was very controlled, well managed and you were making the optimum play the majority of the time.

Having studied sports psychology you start to understand the impact so called "bad luck" can have on the performance of an athlete, this applies to both team and solo sports and is hugely detrimental to them.
e.g. look at how some golfers just seem to fall apart at times where nothing goes right. Is it that he is not getting that lucky bouce away from the bunker or is it that his swing is being impaired by his psycological response to having a bad start to a round/tournament.
(i understand that luck obviously isnt as big of a part of golf as poker but the example still applies)

The same can be said for poker players where they "just dont seem to be getting any luck".

Its not luck thats the main probelm, its your response to a so called bad run!



 

Was Jamie Gold the luckiest person at the WSOP last year?



I doubt it.

My selection was the polio victim, with no arms, who uses his feet & toes to look at his cards & put his chips in. I shared a table with him in Caesars again this year, he's an awesome man.

Unlucky to get polio? Or lucky to have such mental fortitude & backbone to still live as near a normal life as possibe, despite horrendous disabilities? Thats what I mean by "look wider". We Pokerists are way too insular. We don't know what bad luck is if all we can do is bleat on about poker outdraws.

I'll shut up now. ;)

Im not his biggest fan but jamie gold didnt just rise from nowhere for the main event, (im almost positive) he has won $175,000 in previous WSOP events and poker tounreys.

No so shabby!

We should be so lucky.

:D

See, I've shut up.

AND another thing....oops.

Poker is all about skill when you are running good and all about luck when running bad.

Just to throw into the pot, there's the factor of "creating your own luck/bad luck"?

For example, some people say "that lucky bastard always wins competitions" but that 'lucky bastard' created an opportunity to have good luck by actually enterting it in the first place.   Could the same be said for 'entering a pot' initially with a bad hand and striking lucky on the flop???  Yes you got lucky but you created an window for luck to hit you in the first place?

Hell, what do I know, I'm just an Essex 'neon blue' fish  ;D


As for the luck in moving tables and hitting BB 3 times etc on the trot, it would be interesting to see if that does even out over a period of time.   Hmmmmmmmm sadly I think I may now make a note of when it happens versus moving tables and missing the blind - yes, I do have too much time on my hands (and I'm curious now lol)

Luck - you can make yourself 'lucky' or make yourself 'unlucky'.  It all depends on our attitude to life in general.
The studies shown that people who believe that are 'lucky' in fact are luckier by default.

In poker as in life the same principle applies.  Those who dwell on their 'bad beats' outdraws and so forth are not focusing enough on grabbing the opportunities and exploiting what was given to them



Yes sometimes this 'distrubution' might appear as unfair or 'unlucky' but I am sure this is only our perception.

This why the long run is so long, and why people are so fond of saying that you need to play 100k/500k/1mln hands before your cash stats can tell a true story. Because it's not just about winning 60% of your 60/40s - it's about having all those weird and wonderful situations (like m3Boy getting moved to the BB time after time) even themselves out. That sort of bad luck only happens once in a blue moon, and you're going to need several such blue moons to ensure that you get enough good luck back to cancel out the bad.

As others have said though, the game's more about shrugging off that luck and playing well enough the rest of the time that this luck aspect doesn't really matter.

In the original OP, for instance - how many times have you played in a tournament where someone else has been crippled by consecutive blinds like this? You probably don't know, because you wouldn't have noticed. It may be that you once won a tournament precisely because someone else got crippled like this. Even though this happened to you on this occasion, it may be that your good luck in the past in similar situations already outweighs the bad luck you had this time.

You just don't know - and therefore it comes back to what is essentially the common sense way of dealing with it, which is that it's just not worth worrying about.

probably my most skilfull/lucky moment ever ;whistle;

I've been trying to find the article, I do remember him talking about running various hand simulations, including wierd and wonderful ones that we all play not just your standard flips or 60/40's etc. I think it showed he luck factor was still apparent after a couple of million hands and only evened out after several million more. I also remember Greg (http://www.blondepoker.com/blondepedia/blondepedia_view_player.php?player_id=561) Raymer (http://www.blondepoker.com/blondepedia/blondepedia_view_player.php?player_id=561) talking about seeing the same thing in his simulations as he's a bit of a geek when it comes to that sort of stuff.

My last live tourney luck backfired on me...1 off the bubble, i refused a race for my tourney life( I folded to his all in preflop ),having 99,my opponent showed AQ....

thought I'd wait for a better spot as this guy although being the CL was very agressive and would tend to overplay his hands

It came several rounds later and being the small stack i had no alternative to call same opponents all in with 55,now i did get a better spot ,he had 22....only to river a 2 to KO me...not a problem we have all been there...

but luck misfired on me there

So yeah, luck has a huge impact in my opinion

just left wondering whether i should have taken the 50/50 option instead of the 80/20.....

Hi,

I also think it is how players see luck!

Alot of players don't notice when they get moved from UTG to the CO, or when their KQ beats AK on a final table.

But when it is reversed they are the unluckiest player in the world.

If you got moved from the CO the UTG 5 times in a tourney but won the whole thing, would it matter, or would you remember?

Thanks
Steve

There you have it.

There is an easy way to avoid all the heartache of being knocked out of a tournament by a bad beat. Simply get knocked out by playing badly - don't let Lady Luck get a look in.

It works for me beautifully - you never hear me moan about bad beats.

The result is irrelevant to my OP

I would of made that post regardless of the result.

The move for me left me with no choice but to "gamble" with my A8 - if I won that hand and went on to win, the point of my post would be the same.

No One moaned about bad beats, I mentioned "Luck" meaning Good OR Bad Luck

I'm not exactly sure what people mean by 'luck'. Poker is a game of chance, where little is certain and events are determined by probabilities. Sometimes something happens. Another time, in identical circumstances, something else happens. This is the nature of the game. All random events are unconnected. Ascribing undue importance to some perceived correlation between unconnected events is not going to help anyone in their game.

There'll be some change in a player's demeanour based simply on the fact that a series of random events have ended in one set of results rather than another. Spectators will tip a player to do well on account of the fact that 'he's due'. Somewhere, every day, many times over, a mouse or mug is hurled against the wall in frustration. Somewhere else, someone is walking with a strut and giving it the big 'I am' simply because he won five races in a row.

This is exactly how religion started. Thousands of years ago, a man decided that the fact he could never win a hand with AK meant that some mystical force was against him, so he sacrificed his son to appease this mysterious entity.

This is copy/pasted from my blog   www.ricktrigg.com

not on the exact same track as the topic and its a few years old lol.
Have You Got Lucky?

it is important after a win in an Multi-tourney or Sit & go, to evealuate your game, and realise the pots which you won, could have gone the other way.
On very few occasions is it possible to win a, say 100 runner tourney without winning at least one coin flip (50-50) and a lot of the times you may be forced to put your chips in with say KQ v A10 where u are a 60/40 dog.
Often it can be easy after winning a tournament to feel like you have played very good poker and have deserved your win. At times like these you have to remember he times you have been lucky in a single pot and realise that this won't happen in every tourney. My own opinion is that you have to have luck on your side to win a tourney. The differnce between the good players and just the average players is that the good players give themselves the best possibe chance to get lucky by only getting involved in very few showdowns per tournament, this way they may only have to win say 3 coinflips per tourney as opposed to other weaker players who may need to win a lot more, due to their inabilty to steal pots and become more aggressive in the latter stages. I have seen many players who at one time were winning tourneys left right and centre, and they were last seen entering $2 bonus freerolls.

It is very naive to disregard luck in poker. But for a good player the luck comes, by why that they may be lucky not to get unlucky....

Ie they will go into a pot with AK v AQ in a showdown obviously the AK is about 73% favourite but if you are involved in 4 of these coups, you are favourite to lose your stack by the 4th time...

They say that good players don't understand how much luck is in the game and bad players don't realise how much skill is in he game. This is probably right, however bad players often endeavour to learn more about the skill in the game. It is also important for the good players to not learn but understand luck and don't get blinkered into thinking you are invincible, and never forget the times when you get lucky as this will help you take the beats that other players inflict on you.... because as they say "what comes around, goes around".........

Professor Richard Wiseman wrote about luck and 'lack' of it

Is true. It's like lottery numbers. Given an almost indefinite period of time, the amount of times they'll come up will be roughly even. But it'd be a loooooong period of time.

there is no such thing as luck. luck is something invented by people who do not understand probability.

Others are fortunate enough to understand probability only too well

Probability is the outcome of a predictable event - ie rolling a dice.

Having a table broken is not a predictable event - you can never know WHEN it is going to happen.

Or am I talking bollox now? lol

Well, maybe just one ball.

So someone who takes down the lottery at 14 million to 1 isn't lucky?

Someone who travels with an airline with the best safety record in the world and, in a 6.3 million to 1 chance, dies, isn't unlucky?

Come now.

This is something i try to tell people.  A lot will look purely at their exit hand and say how ul they were.  Which is often the wrong thing to do.

Agreed.

yup, being saying it for years - in fact two seperate posts on the same thread from over 18 months ago on blonde.........

Someone who travels with an airline with the best safety record in the world and, in a 6.3 million to 1 chance, dies, isn't unlucky?

Come now.
[/quote]

define "lucky" ? someone who fulfills the criteria to satisfy a statistical event ? Someone has to win it (eventually)

Its interesting that both "events" , realistically the person involved has no control over the outcome but whether the outcome affects them or not is given a human attribute in being "lucky" or "unlucky".

bringing the odds back to a more manageable level for a moment, supposing player A offers player B to toss a coin, and the winner gets 100K. Will the winning player be classed as "lucky" ? There are realistically only 2 outcomes here, and we have succeeded in arriving at one of them. So luck doesnt really have anything to do with it Similarly the lottery has 14 million outcomes, and each week we will arrive at one of these outcomes

Luck is a massive element in poker. But over 1/2 million hands, its negligible.

True but there is always going to be that three or four hands where you lost a flip or had a big hand busted that where so much more important then 99.9% of the other hands. From an amateurs perpective I believe the truth of the matter is the difference between a good amateur and highly successful amateur is not how lucky you get, but when you get lucky. Or probably more importantly when you don’t get particularly unlucky.

But then I have been runner up when the winner has picked up, a ticket for the Irish Open main event, Aruba and The Poker news Cup trip to Aussie and thats just in the past six months so I might be a little bitter! 

Not really, luck and probability are just different ways of explaining the same concept.

Interesting that people think that luck 'evens itself out' over a period of time...

You are born white in a first world country while other peep is born in Darfur. If the 'it evens itself out' theory was true then a whole heap of sh*t needs to happen to you for the theory to work.

I've been thinking about this very topic A LOT in the past month or two.  It was something that was REALLY bothering me too.  How do we know if we're any good at this poker racket and/or just plain lucky/unlucky?  I know I've A LOT to learn about Hold Em yet, but I was starting to get frustrated by the 'luck factor'.  Reading through the posts in this thread, combined with the debates going through my own head, I've finally reached a conclusion I'm happy with.   

I've heard many say, 'You're never done learning the game of Hold Em.'  I'm happy enough with that and know that, if willing to put in the time/practice, some day 'the big win' might come my way.  Until then, keep learning and be sure to focus on the positive or I won't enjoy it. 

That's where the 'luck' debate comes in and depends on what your definition of luck is.  If you have a positive mind set, isn't that half the battle won?  I'm lucky to have the time to play and the money to travel to comps now and then.  I'm lucky to be able to afford the buy ins (smaller than many others, but so what?) and consider each comp 'practice' for the bigger comps I'd like to enter some day.  I'm lucky to cash now and then.  Might not be the winner, but so what?  Do your best, enjoy the game and be happy you cashed.  I'm lucky my family support my interest in poker, even if I'm not making an income out of it...at least it's not costing us in the long run as I always seem to nip a wee cash in there to keep me 'freerolling'. 

Long and short of it...I reckon it's a mind set.  If you're a 'glass half empty' kind of person, then you'll convince yourself you've bad luck and you're doomed.  I'm more of a 'glass is half full' kind of girl and it's not til this minute that I've learned to appreciate it.  Keep positive and good things happen...not all of the time, but definitely most of the time.  Bad beat?  Maybe it's 'good' because if you paid attention, you've learned something new.  Just depends on how much you expect from the situation and how willing you are to pick out the good.   

Posted by: lazaroonie

After 10 winning "flips" player A is sitting on a cool million and player B feels unlucky...and actually is

In poker.

Luck cannot 'even out' over time as luck has no memory.

If you flip a coin ten times and it comes down heads ten times, then flip it ten more times, tails is not more likely to come up in order to even things up. The extreme deviation from the expected results is not likely to continue, but it may.

Just to be perdantic, it has already been proven that a coin will land heads more times than tails - something to do with the weight on each side of the coin ;P

From the cambridge dictionary

luck 
noun
The force that causes things, especially good things, to happen to you by chance and not as a result of your own efforts or abilities:

(as my efforts at this wonderful game have proved countless times ability is a shotcoming)

probability 
noun [C or U]
the likelihood of something happening or being true:

(yep I will get beaten when i'm ahead)

This could be debated at great length, but I agree with the people that have said
-- play your best
-- love the game
-- love the company
-- play within your means
-- rejoice at your success
-- forget the beats (its experience but unfortuntely they are always remembered)

Whether I have "luck" (I have won a couple of things) or whether I have not -- I love this game and will continue to play it and enjoy it

Depends on the coin though. 

er....I believe that may have qualified for the daftest response of the year.


eg...man walks away from a plane crash - plays poker and gets his AA cracked....in your world he is 'unlucky'....or you argue the two events are unrelated. Which if you do is even more daft. Quantify 'survivors of plane crashes' vs 'people who have had AA cracked'..... go figure

"luck determines who has the best cards...Skill determines who has the most chiips"    If only!!


There is no doubt some people are "luckier" than others. I work in a gambling environment, and have done for 30 years,and I am in no doubt that some are blessed with good luck and others cursed with bad.(purely in gambling terms)

The amount of good fortune, or otherwise, is unquantifiable, but both extremes can be seen on a regular basis.  It is true that we recall "bad luck" far more easily than good, as this has more effect on our circumstances, but we should never discount our good fortune and attempt to capitalise on it when it comes our way. I look on it as the opposite of tilt. If I have some outrageous luck I push until the"streak" runs out. Enjoy the rush when things are running for you, dig in and grind when lady luck fails to return your phone calls.

I think the point may have been that luck was only being discussed here in a poker context... I'm sure everyone would agree that factors which hugely influence life in general can't necessarily be evened out. Should I be hit and killed by a bus today, for example, my chances of winning next week's 50 quid rebuy are almost certainly not going to improve.

Lol.

This is not a moan, I just want to try and re-iterate what my point of this thread was

For the people who think "Luck" evens itself out - I have now been in position to go onto final tables with real good chips in my last 6 tournaments, only to suffer at the hands of the poker gods (the hands are on the forum and my blog and are mostly 70/30 or 80/20 chances).

How many tournaments do you think I have to be in the same position but get it in behind so I am facing 30/70 or 20/80 chances (ie I have the AQ vs QQ) and win?

It just wont happen!

That was what I meant about Luck factor in poker - timing!

Posted on: Today at 12:39:06 amPosted by: M3boy

Yes. I agree with this entirely.

You must accept bad luck in poker because it is the nature of the game....but someone hitting a 5% chance on you on the bubble of the WSOP Main Event for the chip lead...and then you get done by another 5% chance in your next life-changing event etc.... is surely much unluckier than those statistical requirements being filled in a regular £20 rebuy. It is without the doubt the circumstances under which your opponent hits his unlikely card that determines how lucky/unlucky your are. Why did that happen NOW when we could play it out 100 times and I win 96 of those times? I have never been a fan of the long-term philosophy when applied to tournament play...because you will NEVER get another chance to be in this unique situation again. Once you get knocked out you are OUT end of.

A guy uses the same lottery numbers every Saturday for 10 years with no joy..one Saturday he forgets..and his numbers come up. Even the most hardened statastician must agree this is pretty bloody unlucky!

TY Mant - someone gets the point I am trying to make

FYP

Hey Paul,

It's almost impossible for luck to even itself out. Firstly, a good and solid player can never dish out the beats as much as he recieves them. Simple reason being, he would not be risking his chips in a bad spot as much as he would with the best hand. And as we know, you can go on a run of losing with the best. In fact, I recall a friend of mine went out in eleven finals in row holding A-A. He actually gave up poker soon after that period (not saying that those beats were responsiblefor his retirement). But anyhow, he was one of those types of player who made very few mistakes. And as such, you would rarely see him behind in a any showdown. So how could the luck factor ever even itself out over a period?

But it also important to remember that there are varing degrees of luck. And as far as these are cocnerend, luck could more than even itself out. For example, six bad beats in a row in smalll events, and hitting runner runnner to win a major event.

Also, there must be players who are extremely lucky and unlucky. But at the end of the day, the more your play requires luck, the luckier you need to be. The thing is, there are players who play just like that. And to give an example.....


I remember how one top (very aggresive but somewhat loose) player,  got extremely unlucky in a major event. This was in the late stages of the event and for a pot that would have virtually assured him a place on final. Of course, he said something about his bad luck. Then someone reminded him about the many beats he had dished out during a reccent good run he had had. And to his credit, he just smiled and noddded his head. It was the kind of nod that said yep, I know what you mean. I had played many times with the player in question, and the truth is, his ratio was about 10-1 in terms of giving and receiving beats.

PS,

The above same player, has actually changed his style of play in the last couple of years and has become far more selective with his hands. Perhaps in this example, luck will even itself out. Though I bet he hopes it doesn't!   

Just saw this and had to defend myself, although Moskovich is right, in the context of poker was what i meant.

You are trying to put the world right, im trying to discuss a poker thread.

Ill be the daft one, you can be the twat.

But, similarly, some other guy may play the lottery for the first time one week, and win the jackpot.

And yet both had the same chance of winning.

Tournament poker, by its very nature, makes some hands way more important than all the others. In this select subset of hands throughout any substantial period of time, the odds of losing them all doesn't have to be that high. Make it losing, say, 5 out of 7, and the odds drop further.

The only way to be a long-term winner in live MTTs is to be a luckbox - skill will only get you so far.

I agree with this statement to an extent, by that I mean you firstly HAVE to have the skill to GET you in position THEN you need to be a luckbox.

Being a luckbox only will NOT make you a winning MTT player

IMO of course

You didn't play in the SNG with Dewi on Sat night - no skill at all, that man, all luckbox.

You know what you are getting into when you enter an mtt. Unless the structure is super super slow (like GJP festival) it is still a crapshoot. Someone has the tag "donkaments for show, cash for dough" and it rings true from where im standing.

enough people play mtts for a living

I understand online as you can put in the vast quantities needed to combat variance, but live how many uk festival players are actually making a decent wage at the end of the year after all expenses. Very few id imagine.