Confidence at an all time low so playing badly and clueless.

[Eck]

Has anyone offered Stu a column yet?

This stuff is excellent; seems to me he puts more effort into this thread than some people I know do at their work on a daily basis.

Was thinking the same whilst sat at my desk reading his posts.

I am obviously on holiday today and I didn't really want to name names etc but there you go....

[bobAlike]

Has anyone offered Stu a column yet?

This stuff is excellent; seems to me he puts more effort into this thread than some people I know do at their work on a daily basis.

Was thinking the same whilst sat at my desk reading his posts.

Ditto, I really must try harder.

[NEWY]

To NEWY....

You are right, it is often counter-productive to focus on luck. Especially when this leads us to absolving ourselves of responsibility for our lives. Or when it leads to us being jealous of others who who 'run better than us'. Nothing good can come of this.

However... when we are successful in something it is often a VERY good idea to recognise how lucky we are. And to realise that we did not succeed purely through the things that we did. This is a great way of maintaining humility and keeping our feet on the ground. It is also an important way in which we can avoid hubris.

The thing is, it is NOT TRUE that everyone who is successful obtained their success solely through hard work, drive, skill, commitment. These things are (usually) essential to achieve success. But they are not enough. Everyone needs a bit of luck, or at least an absence of bad luck. Imagine two highly talented footballers. Both have exactly the same talents, and also exactly the same motivation, work ethic, flair, competitive instinct etc. A scout comes to see them from a big club. One of them gets injured in the first five minutes of the game through a reckless challenge from an opponent. The other player is man of the match and gets signed up to play professionally.

Now maybe you will say, "Well if that first player is good enough, and wants it enough... he would eventually succeed. If he doesn't get signed up later on by a big club he can't blame it on the injury, he has only himself to blame." Well first of all... remember that both these guys had EXACTLY the same characteristics in EVERY manner. So if the guy who succeeded had been the one who got injured then HE would not have ended up later succeeding either. And second, what happens if the guy who gets injured is unlucky enough to have a career destroying injury? Or maybe he just picks up another injury the next two times scouts come to visit.

I agree that we should not become obsessed with luck or with what 'could have been'. That way madness lies. But we need to recognise that there is a lot more luck in life than it appears at first glance. If only so that we are all able to realise just how LUCKY WE ARE.

Probably getting off topic as this was supposed to be poker related for herbies benefit so my last 2 cents wud be that footballer A did not get "lucky" he got scouted and signed because of his talent and hard work. Player B got unlucky gettin injured but that is completely diff. A footballer if talented enough WILL get scouted and is nothing to do with luck. Kids play 12 years + before the age of signing pro forms. so if they have the talent then they will get scouted. Anyone who says they did not get their "lucky" break is jus lyin and they were not good enough. Once scouted it is then upto them to work hard and prove their dedication and commitment in order to make it, again nothing to do with luck. Of course I recognise in life people get lucky and unlucky but it is jus part and parcel of every day life and with regard to poker, work and sport in the end people withh drive determination and are more likely to succeed. I would rather b good at somethin than lucky. Whilst u have to acknowledge there are luck factors that influence it should not be used as an excuse for failure. U often reap wot u sow.

[redarmi]

Couple of interesting points brought up in recent posts.  

Firstly, I think there is some confusion with regards understanding how variance works and where it is important.  Newy gave the example of job interviews.  This isn't a particularly high variance pursuit.  Generally speaking the best candidate will get the position more often than not.  Of course there are elements of luck, variance and bias in all things but the point of Honeybadger and others posts isn't that hard work will not be rewarded but that in the short term in tournament poker it is less likely to be rewarded than we perceive and when it is rewarded it may be rewarded disproportionately.  This disparity of reward levels isn't evident in most jobs so of course Robs sales team will be fairly consistent in their returns and show a higher short term correlation with results.  Unlike a poker player Robs sales team aren't likely to get 100 sales on one call except in very exceptional circumstances so there will be a very direct correlation between the number and quality of the calls they make and their results.  Contrast that with a professional poker player who enters the wsop main event.  There is, say, 8k entrants of which maybe 1k have a +EV yet only maybe 20% of them will earn anything yet one in a year like this Greg Merson who may have had an EV of 100% overearned his EV by 300x or something.  That has to be paid by other people earning less than their EV.  Even if they are the worst player in the world everyone in the wsop has an expected value yet every year 85% of them walk away having taken home less than that ie nothing.

The discussion about taking reduced variance lines is also interesting.  In purely mathematical terms then we should always seek to maximise profits or, in poker terms take the highest EV line but in reality increased variance also leads to increased chance of going bust which for someone like Honeybadger with four kids and a wife to support would be catostrophic whereas losing, say £100 a week in earnings would be less so.  So effectively the correct route in terms of personal utility is to pay a premium (in the shape of reduced EV) for a lower chance of the catastrophy but what we absolutely mustn't do is tip that balance into -EV territory because then we stop earning.  We can only afford to take a lower variance line if more than one of the lines available are +EV.

[DaveShoelace]

To NEWY....

You are right, it is often counter-productive to focus on luck. Especially when this leads us to absolving ourselves of responsibility for our lives. Or when it leads to us being jealous of others who who 'run better than us'. Nothing good can come of this.

However... when we are successful in something it is often a VERY good idea to recognise how lucky we are. And to realise that we did not succeed purely through the things that we did. This is a great way of maintaining humility and keeping our feet on the ground. It is also an important way in which we can avoid hubris.

The thing is, it is NOT TRUE that everyone who is successful obtained their success solely through hard work, drive, skill, commitment. These things are (usually) essential to achieve success. But they are not enough. Everyone needs a bit of luck, or at least an absence of bad luck. Imagine two highly talented footballers. Both have exactly the same talents, and also exactly the same motivation, work ethic, flair, competitive instinct etc. A scout comes to see them from a big club. One of them gets injured in the first five minutes of the game through a reckless challenge from an opponent. The other player is man of the match and gets signed up to play professionally.

Now maybe you will say, "Well if that first player is good enough, and wants it enough... he would eventually succeed. If he doesn't get signed up later on by a big club he can't blame it on the injury, he has only himself to blame." Well first of all... remember that both these guys had EXACTLY the same characteristics in EVERY manner. So if the guy who succeeded had been the one who got injured then HE would not have ended up later succeeding either. And second, what happens if the guy who gets injured is unlucky enough to have a career destroying injury? Or maybe he just picks up another injury the next two times scouts come to visit.

I agree that we should not become obsessed with luck or with what 'could have been'. That way madness lies. But we need to recognise that there is a lot more luck in life than it appears at first glance. If only so that we are all able to realise just how LUCKY WE ARE.

Probably getting off topic as this was supposed to be poker related for herbies benefit so my last 2 cents wud be that footballer A did not get "lucky" he got scouted and signed because of his talent and hard work. Player B got unlucky gettin injured but that is completely diff. A footballer if talented enough WILL get scouted and is nothing to do with luck. Kids play 12 years + before the age of signing pro forms. so if they have the talent then they will get scouted. Anyone who says they did not get their "lucky" break is jus lyin and they were not good enough. Once scouted it is then upto them to work hard and prove their dedication and commitment in order to make it, again nothing to do with luck. Of course I recognise in life people get lucky and unlucky but it is jus part and parcel of every day life and with regard to poker, work and sport in the end people withh drive determination and are more likely to succeed. I would rather b good at somethin than lucky. Whilst u have to acknowledge there are luck factors that influence it should not be used as an excuse for failure. U often reap wot u sow.

There is a genuine luck factor where football, and most sports is concerned, and that relates to when a child is born. Children who are the oldest in their year (So in the UK it would be September-December) invariably are the biggest and most well developed kids in their class. So they get encouraged to play football and run rings around the other kids. This early encouraging start in life can actually become the catalyst for being a promising footballer and by the time the youngest kids in the class have caught up physically they have already took interest in other stuff. The same thing is true for Ice Hockey in Canada, their school year starts in January and most pro hockey players are born in between January and March.

[Doobs]

At Doobs...

I did say that my opinion was contentious. And many people will not agree with it.

It is partly just a question of sanity. We are all human, and we we all have limits. I can probably endure much longer losing runs at poker than the vast majority of players. But even I will crack eventually. And apart from anything else, I need to pay the bills every month. So I must do what I can to ensure that, for example, I am EXTREMELY unlikely ever to have a 6 month losing period. It would be very unlikely anyway tbh... but there is always a chance, even if I was a great player rather than just a mediocre one. I feel the need to give up a TINY amount of EV in some spots in order to make the worst case scenario even more unlikely to occur.

Remember, I am talking about occasionally turning down some very marginal spots... I am not recommending anyone turns down thick edges.

There is actually a mathematical justification for this (that sometimes it is the most +EV thing to do to turn down a small +EV spot). But I have to go now. I will, hopefully, write about it later.

Edited to say: Actually, when you say this:

If you are playing live cash with higher blinds than you would in your normal online game or in a big tournament it can make much more sense.

A few years ago, I bust out of the EPT grand final and the WSOP main event very close to the money taking lines that I would not take now.  At the time I was thinking poker is just one big long game, got to attack the bubble, but now I realise I am never going to get above double figures lifetime in $10k + tournaments and I may not even get to double figures.  In the circumstances these $20k hits are always going to be significant in my lifetime poker earnings.

It is clear that you pretty much agree with me anyway. Because this is exactly the sort of thing that I mean.

BTW almost everyone (myself included) plays with much higher blinds in live games than they do in their regular online games.

I am not disagreeing with you, more clarifying.  As you stated, I pretty much agree with everything you have said in this thread, including on Fooled by Randomness and on Real World luck.  

In the real world people can be in very different financial positions depending on when they bought their house, when they had money to invest, if they were in the right place when a senior position became available, when they took their pension etc and indeed if they were lucky enough to be in work when good pensions were the norm.. and of course country of birth.

...and of course, when they started playing poker.  If I started right now, I would have to work way harder to make as much money from poker as I have done.


  

[aaron1867]

Who is HoneyBadger in real life? He is owning this thread at the moment? Is it Barry Neville?

I thought you was Barry Neville at one point, when people started calling you Barry & mentioning Genting in Sheffield.

I apologise.

[skolsuper]

@Rob Yong:

Making predictions in poker is a one way function, you can make reasonable predictions of someone's results from knowledge of their skill, even over relatively short periods, e.g. "I think Keith Johnson will win over 3 months/12 sessions in the DTD £2/5 game" (you're still overestimating this btw, you don't realise how good Keith has run), however it takes a long time to be able to make reliable predictions of skill from results alone, e.g. if you hear that someone new comes to the DTD £2/5 games and after 12 sessions is up £10k, you might think that means they are probably a good player, when in reality it means nothing at all. If you actually play in all 12 sessions with them and observe them playing well/badly, that is a much more reliable indicator.

edit: ^ can someone fix that link for me

EDIT: Done

[Honeybadger]

The discussion about taking reduced variance lines is also interesting.  In purely mathematical terms then we should always seek to maximise profits or, in poker terms take the highest EV line but in reality increased variance also leads to increased chance of going bust which for someone like Honeybadger with four kids and a wife to support would be catostrophic whereas losing, say £100 a week in earnings would be less so.  So effectively the correct route in terms of personal utility is to pay a premium (in the shape of reduced EV) for a lower chance of the catastrophy but what we absolutely mustn't do is tip that balance into -EV territory because then we stop earning.  We can only afford to take a lower variance line if more than one of the lines available are +EV.

I agree with everything you say. In relation to the above quoted part, I have an analogy to make.

Most of us have insurance policies, right? Sometimes we are legally obliged to have them (e.g. car insurance), but others are a choice. From a pure EV perspective, taking out an insurance policy is -EV. It is a mug bet. And it is not just slightly -EV... it is highly -EV. If this were not the case then insurance companies would not make a profit.

The most +EV line to take is to never get insurance unless you are legally obliged to do so, and to save (or invest) the money instead. I would imagine, however, that many of those who believe we should always take the most +EV lines and should never make any concessions to variance DO have some form of insurance, or will do in the future.

Taking out insurance is simply giving up a small amount of EV in order to smooth out the variance. It is an extreme example, but often extreme examples are the best at showing the logic behind a situation. If someone strongly believes that he should never give up any EV in poker as a concession to variance then to be logically consistent he should also never take out insurance on anything.

[DaveShoelace]

Who is HoneyBadger in real life? He is owning this thread at the moment? Is it Barry Neville?

I thought you was Barry Neville at one point, when people started calling you Barry & mentioning Genting in Sheffield.

I apologise.

It's ok, I forget which one I am sometimes.

[smashedagain]

You set of wankers. Stu would be quite happy changing nappies and taking the kids to school. If it was not for me asking the dumb ass questions then he would not be giving the excellent responses.

Hi Will, just to put people's minds at rest I ain't giving up the game just yet and I am a million miles away from being at the end of a short rope. The traffic this thread is generating is almost as much as Tips for Tikay. Those guys are having a sweet month.

I do have another question that is going to generate some more debate but will leave it for a while to let the people absorb more the posts that are already written. I for one have to read a lot of this stuff a couple of times to take it all in.

Hey James, people regard Keith to be undoubtedly one of the best players in Dtd. I know this is true but have only played with him once or twice

Confirmed  - joined the herbinators table as chip leader - he then repeatedly told me how great I was while gently relieving me of my chips.

Just saying

[George2Loose]

Jase u seem to be larking about on this thread like you do at the tables? Or is that just my harsh observation?

[david3103]

Jase u seem to be larking about on this thread like you do at the tables? Or is that just my harsh observation?

He's reading it, the larking about is for show just like the headphones and the hoodies.

[Tal]

Jase u seem to be larking about on this thread like you do at the tables? Or is that just my harsh observation?

Good point, George. Who fancies setting him a quiz?

[George2Loose]

Set of rules for his next comp.

Number 1 no talking