More Luck in Poker than most people think...............

[matt674]

I have never been lucky...every single win has just been skill.

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

 

[Longy]

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.

[matt674]

It's all karma man.  Stay cool

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

[tikay]

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

 

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.

[kinboshi]

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 McEvoy 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." 

[byronkincaid]

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

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

[kinboshi]

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

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 Gold 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

[Woodsey]

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.

[KingPoker]

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!



 

[tikay]

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.

[KingPoker]

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

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 Gold 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

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!

[RED-DOG]

I'll shut up now.

We should be so lucky.

[Claw75]

I'll shut up now.

We should be so lucky.

[tikay]

I'll shut up now.

We should be so lucky.

[tikay]

See, I've shut up.

AND another thing....oops.