Luck and Poker

I am a great believer that luck plays a big part of poker. And, that luck comes and goes on an unpredictable basis.

If one could figure out the routine, they could play when their luck is running and sit out when the luck is not running.

I play a few hands and if I see the cards are not coming, I will quit for the day.

Of course one has to know the basic of good poker playing to achieve this.

Cant say I am winning lots of money, but, just feel that trying to understand how the "luck" routine is scheduled by the "Poker Gods" is the key to being successful in poker.

Easier said than done.

Some times when I wins some monster hands, I dont take credit for good play. I just chark it up to the "luck factor" kicking in.

I would appreciate input and oppinions from the Cardschaters bout what they think about the "luck factor" . And, also, does it appear that some players have more luck than others.

Just something to comtemplate. As, we all read the books and study the ABCs of Polker and still lose.

Thanks for listening to my raving. LMAO

mange

There is some luck in poker but when you do win that monster hand , luck becomes less and less of a factor. Normally the bigger the chip stack you gain from that monster hand most people will play reckless.

Then they start losing and say It's all luck, but at that point It has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with dicipline.

I am a great believer that luck plays a big part of poker. And, that luck comes and goes on an unpredictable basis.

If one could figure out the routine, they could play when their luck is running and sit out when the luck is not running.

I play a few hands and if I see the cards are not coming, I will quit for the day.

Of course one has to know the basic of good poker playing to achieve this.

Cant say I am winning lots of money, but, just feel that trying to understand how the "luck" routine is scheduled by the "Poker Gods" is the key to being successful in poker.

Easier said than done.

Some times when I wins some monster hands, I don't take credit for good play. I just chark it up to the "luck factor" kicking in.

I would appreciate input and oppinions from the Cardschaters bout what they think about the "luck factor" . And, also, does it appear that some players have more luck than others.

Just something to comtemplate. As, we all read the books and study the ABCs of Polker and still lose.

Thanks for listening to my raving. LMAO

mange

Click to expand...

Thats superstitious nonsense mate!!!

Every hand has a high element of luck, but each new hand is independent of the last and indeed the next.

The skill of poker is 'luck management' - keeping the pot size down on bad hands and getting onley into decent hands. Its realizing that if you make a bet paying 3:1 odds when you need 4:1 you loose, even if you win the hand.

Its fair to say something like.. 'If I loose 3 buy-ins then I pack up for the day because there is a good chance I'm not playing my best that day'

or 'After loosing a few buy-ins I go on tilt and the loss affects me emotionally and mentally so I need time away before I can play well again'

But as for luck.. you get dealt just as many premium hands per poker hour as any top pro. You also get dealt as much crap too.

They make money because they are better players than most.. its not to do with divine intervention and its not a case of them being somehow luckier than most.

Downswings happen to everyone. I think Daniel Negreau lost something like $500,000 in the first two series of High Stakes Poker. But in later series he made it back. Was he unlucky to loose it? - no! Poker is a game with a high amount of luck involved in each hand. He played them well but bad luck meant he got sucked out.

When he won it back + some, was he lucky? - no! again he played his hands just like he played the loosing ones but this time he his cards held up.

So the downswing and upswing is inevitable so long as you play decent poker.

Is the profit luck? no! thats the result of skill.

As I said before, poker is about managing luck.. any 2 cards can win, but a decent player would rarely ever play any 2 cards.. that would be simply a game of luck or chance. Instead he picks his spot and plays to win.

Stu_Ungar said:

Thats superstitious nonsense mate!!!

Every hand has a high element of luck, but each new hand is independent of the last and indeed the next.

The skill of poker is 'luck management' - keeping the pot size down on bad hands and getting onley into decent hands. Its realizing that if you make a bet paying 3:1 odds when you need 4:1 you loose, even if you win the hand.

Its fair to say something like.. 'If I loose 3 buy-ins then I pack up for the day because there is a good chance I'm not playing my best that day'

or 'After loosing a few buy-ins I go on tilt and the loss affects me emotionally and mentally so I need time away before I can play well again'

But as for luck.. you get dealt just as many premium hands per poker hour as any top pro. You also get dealt as much crap too.

They make money because they are better players than most.. its not to do with divine intervention and its not a case of them being somehow luckier than most.

Downswings happen to everyone. I think Daniel Negreau lost something like $500,000 in the first two series of High Stakes Poker. But in later series he made it back. Was he unlucky to loose it? - no! Poker is a game with a high amount of luck involved in each hand. He played them well but bad luck meant he got sucked out.

When he won it back + some, was he lucky? - no! again he played his hands just like he played the loosing ones but this time he his cards held up.

So the downswing and upswing is inevitable so long as you play decent poker.

Is the profit luck? no! thats the result of skill.

As I said before, poker is about managing luck.. any 2 cards can win, but a decent player would rarely ever play any 2 cards.. that would be simply a game of luck or chance. Instead he picks his spot and plays to win.

Click to expand...

well put!!!!! couldnt put it any better! +1 for you sir..........

tournaments vs ring games

If you are a tournament player yes luck will come into play wayyyyy more often than in ring games. In a tournament many times you are forced to make a move you wouldn't normally make in a ring game because of the increasing blinds. Thus you often are faced with showdowns where anything can happen. In ring games you have more control of when you are getting your money in and how often. It is a more controlled environment because the blinds stay the same. So yes...if all you play is torunaments you will need luck on your side more often than if you play ring games.

[x] It's superstitious and untrue.
[x] Humans create patterns. Short term, with limited insight, it's easy to come to these false conclusions. But the wider and more informed your view the sillier and sillier the idea of luck becomes.
[ ] Your actions kill puppies.
[x] Do what makes you happy.
[x] If early losses cause tilt, quitting can be your best path.

Luck is chance disguised as a force in nature in our heads.
If you believe in luck, I believe your bank roll will slowly disappear.
Get your money in good, and keep it out when bad and let chance do its own thing.

In the short run, it may appear that some players are luckier than others, but since the cards are dealt randomly each hand, no one can have a "luck" advantage. It's how you play the hands you're dealt that counts.

Most gamblers I've met really believe in luck. At Craps, they say the table is "running hot," so they want to play. Or I've heard that some slot machine players will actually wet themselves rather than taking a bathroom break because their machine is "due." If they leave, they are afraid it will pay off to someone else. Just makes you realize how far-fetched are the ideas of real gamblers. I don't think good poker players are gamblers in that sense. Taking calculated risks is different from gambling or being lucky.

I've heard that some slot machine players will actually wet themselves rather than taking a bathroom break because their machine is "due."

Click to expand...

That one actually has an element of truth!!! We used to sit in the pub all day and watch the fruit machines, you kind of got a feel as to when they had been played enough to pay out.

In fact one model, you could actually see the coin shoot if you looked up though the reels at the right angle.. if it was full £10 would usually win you aroun £50 - 70 but if it was clearly empty you had no chance of winning anything worth keeping.. so it would end up back in the machine. We only ever played it when it was likely to pay out .. most of the time it did.. and when it didnt, it usually paid the next guy to use it.. but we wernt going to feed it any more coins than the £10 we set aside for that!!!

I dont know how that translates to the Vegas style slot machines, but I can see where the belief stems from!!!

But yeah, luck is simply a human interpretation of a short term 'pattern'

Its also a get out clause for those who have made mistakes in life.. not just poker. You hear it every day.. the guy who clearly looks like he isnt in control of his own life and blames bad luck for it, rather than a lack of drive / dedication. Its easier to blame the universe than it is to accept the fault is your own!!

Luck has no memory. There is no pattern to it and that's a fact. If you think that you are on a lucky or unlucky streak, it is just a coincidence that that keeps happening. If you get 27 offsuit for 12 hands in a row, you are just as likely to get pocket aces the next hand as you would be if you had gotten aces for the last 12 hands.

If we tossed a coin a million times and i had heads and you had tails every time, would we win 500,000 each? I think that some people are luckier than others, some people get lots of good hands somepeople get less, it is ridiculous to think that everyone gets exactly the same number of good and bad hands.

If we tossed a coin a million times and i had heads and you had tails every time, would we win 500,000 each? I think that some people are luckier than others, some people get lots of good hands somepeople get less, it is ridiculous to think that everyone gets exactly the same number of good and bad hands.

Click to expand...

Ok if you tossed a coin 1,000,000 times then would we expect it to land heads up 500,000 times. Yes and no

Yes - because that makes the maths easier to work with probabilities.

No because that would imply some kind of divine intervention.. and thus give the basis for an argument for luck.

Infact you would expect a degree of varience.. but how much?

well using standard deviations, we would expect to be within 1 deviation 68% of the time.

To be within 2 standard deviatins 95% of the time

To be within 3 standard deviations 99.7% of the time.

A standard deviation for a coinflip (2 equaly likely outcomes), is simply the square root of the sample size.

So

sq. rt of 1,000,000 is 1000.

So 99.7% of the time we will be within 3 standard deviations of the expected result.

so 99.7% of the time we will be within 3000 of 500,000

So if you flip a coin 1,000,000 times you would expect it

heads up between 497,000 and 503,000 times.

what you find is that the bigger the sample the closer it becomes to the expected value.

On a sample size of 100, a standard deviation is 10 and so 3 deviations would be 30.

So instead of expecting heads to land 50 times we would expext it to land somewhere between 20 -80 times

So when we talk about probabilities, we talk about the theoretical value. In practice we also need to consider the normal varience which also occures.

The human brain has evolved to quickly reconise patterns.. its a survival thing, we learn by our mistakes and in a hunter gatherer sense we cant afford to make too many.

Thats why expressions like 'once bitten, twice shy' exist.

The trouble with things like poker is that we are too quick to formulate patterns which simply dont exist. We see a guy get a long run of good / bad cards and we formulate a 'pattern' in our minds. This pattern must then be explained and the concept of luck is an easy way of doing that. We have to, in our own minds, explain things because its our nature.. its why we have evolved as a spicies. Its simply how our minds work.

But if you look deeper.. you look for a more 'adult' explaination, a more scientific explaination, we find that luck is not the issue, the real issue is the size of the sample.

100 hands is an evenings live play.. but its too small a sample for the results to not be suceptable to normal varience.

Obviously there is more to poker than starting hands.. the pros seem to make it work.. but honestly.. thats just due to their reading and post flop skills.. and of course a bit of luck!!! LOL

Yeah, its like 30% whats luck in Poker..
Sometimes u get very lucky, but sometimes all goes wrong and you lose.. ;/
This happens to me all day.

Luck has no memory.

Click to expand...

This is a yes and no thing too.

Luck dosnt exist.. therefore it also has no memory.. so yes the statement is true (well kinda.. if it dosnt exist it cant have ant attribute assigned to it therefore its false.. but I know what you meant)

The no part is not due to the memory of luck.. its due to the memory of people.

If you have a bad run of cards, it does effect your confidence (whether or not you believe in luck)

Read the last part of my above post.. but as humans we see patterns.. even if you dont believe in luck on a concious level, sub-conciously the bad run will affect you to some degree.. we are still wired to detect and react to patterns, no matter how clever we are, its built in to us.

The other issue is that other players will see us loose time and time again and become more confident in playing us.. again its a pattern thing.. the fist few times we suckout the guy might think 'wow i got lucky there' but after a few times he dosnt see it in the same ight even though logially the situation hasnt changed.

So there are two factors to consider.

1. a run of cards / good or bad affects our own confidence.

2. the same run of cards effects the opponents confidence in the opposite wy to ours.

So when winning hand after hand due to good cards, it becomes easier to bully a table

and when loosing it becomes more likely to get bullied by the table.

This .. to the untrained may further support the notion of luck!

I believe there is no luck in poker. Poker is a mathematical game, poker is not luck , it is percentages. Odds are only in place to tell you who should win the hand most of the time, Not all the time. If someone is continually catching cards to make the best hand they are not actually lucky, they are over-acheiving, The only time you could experience luck at a poker table is during a highly contested game of strip poker.

jtberrym said:

If you are a tournament player yes luck will come into play wayyyyy more often than in ring games. In a tournament many times you are forced to make a move you wouldn't normally make in a ring game because of the increasing blinds. Thus you often are faced with showdowns where anything can happen. In ring games you have more control of when you are getting your money in and how often. It is a more controlled environment because the blinds stay the same. So yes...if all you play is torunaments you will need luck on your side more often than if you play ring games.

Click to expand...

1000% agree.

loose on allins in tournaments with AK vs K7 because on the flop comes a 7 for example

The skill part is putting yourself in +EV situations while avoiding the negative. AA will sometimes lose to 2 7 off but thats the luck part.
most of the time you win.
As the song says.."you got to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, and dont mess with Mr. in-between"

On the other hand. its not wise to play when your stars are in the wrong house!
LOL

dvd-GT said:

If we tossed a coin a million times and i had heads and you had tails every time, would we win 500,000 each? I think that some people are luckier than others, some people get lots of good hands somepeople get less, it is ridiculous to think that everyone gets exactly the same number of good and bad hands.

Click to expand...

So lets assume for a second that in your mind, you're luckier than I am. Do you actually think that you are more likely to get pocket aces than I am? Poker is probability, it's not some voodoo divine intervention causing us to get lucky. This is where the whole notion of pot odds comes in. Are you suggesting that in the same exact situation, it is smart for one person to call a bet, whereas it is stupid for another person, with the same exact hand, to call the same exact bet? A coin is random. So if we toss it a million times, would it land heads exactly 500K? Probably not, but it would be pretty dang close. Of course things don't always work out perfectly, but if something should happen 50 % of the time, it will happen somewhere around 50 % of the time. If you really think that you're so lucky, go ahead and call with gutshot straight draws and weak hands, figuring you'll get lucky. I'm sure the people you're playing with will appreciate it.

Right On

Stu_Ungar said:

But yeah, luck is simply a human interpretation of a short term 'pattern'

Its also a get out clause for those who have made mistakes in life.. not just poker. You hear it every day.. the guy who clearly looks like he isnt in control of his own life and blames bad luck for it, rather than a lack of drive / dedication. Its easier to blame the universe than it is to accept the fault is your own!!

Click to expand...

Amen.

The other side of this "equation" is those attempting to apply some kind of pseudo-science to gambling.

I truly do not understand those who firmly believe they are "loading" a slot machine by putting seemingly endless coins or tokens in them. If that truly EVER was possible, the casinos would, and undoubtedly have, put adjustments into the machines (even easier with the new electronic models) to compensate.

My other favorite is Keno, possibly the only "game of chance" that makes the various lotteries look like good investments. It is/was legal in Montana and just about every place that served alcohol with or without food had Keno boards. I watched people sit for hours with notebooks and calculators copying down every number in every round (continuing to bet in every round, of course), firmly convinced that they were gonna figure out which numbers were "due" and make a big score. Evidently nobody did because I figure it would have made the papers.

Same principal as the companies making millions selling various software packages purporting to give you the winning lottery numbers, evidently again based on some theory that some numbers are more "due" than others.

There's a quote somewhere to the effect that so-called "luck" is that point where opportunity, ability and preparation intersect.

Surly luck plays a big part in poker, but much more impotant than luck are definitly your skills. Luck come and goes and when it went you have to trust your skills otherwise you have no chance to win money!
I heard that poker will be a sport and not anymore a gambleplay!
That would be a great change.

Over the long run your expected win vs. loss in certain situations will equal out. The only thing that differs in the long with regards to luck is the "situatoinal luck". Say you are in an AA vs KK race 5 times over a month. You have aces every time. You are expected to win 4/5 times. If you win 4 times in a ring game and gain $5 each time, but lose the one time on the bubble of the Sunday Millions, this is actually unlucky. You won the expected amount, but it worked out so that it happened at the wrong time. Situational luck exists, everything else will even out.

In my eyes luck is involved in a poker tourney. Strategy and skill come in to play through observation of your opponents, their habits, their betting patters and so forth. Anyone can play basic "smart poker" but that will not win a tourney. You have to pay attention and know who to play against, when to challenge them, and when to put your money in the pot.

25% Luck
75% strategy

almostfamous1003 said:

In my eyes luck is involved in a poker tourney. Strategy and skill come in to play through observation of your opponents, their habits, their betting patters and so forth. Anyone can play basic "smart poker" but that will not win a tourney. You have to pay attention and know who to play against, when to challenge them, and when to put your money in the pot.

Click to expand...

What? In your first sentence you say that luck is involved in a tourney, but then you proceed to explain how it has nothing to do with a tourney. So now I'm a bit confused as to where you stand.