Is NL hold em, the biggest luck involved poker game ?

[wildyetty]

I believe KK, is rated to win around 75% of the time { over the long haul } in
NL hold em games. I lose with it around 78% of the time, over the last 3 years . Are you trying to claim that I just play KK so badly, that it is suppose to lose for me, at such a absurdly high percentage rating ? You dont see that such a loss stat with KK, also indicates extremely bad luck ?

I mean if I have KK and a decent stack near the end of a tourney, and I raise 4x big blind, and I get one caller , and a ACE flops, and my opponent goes all in { which would bust me from tourney} ..I FOLD my KK....I dont play reckless poker.

do you change your preflop bet size when you hit premium hand?? If all of a sudden you put out a 3 x raise after 2.5 every raise b4 hand and I am sitting on AK I will put you on premium hand and see the flop with you. If Ace hits or straight draw do you keep bombing the pot? again you have a hud copy and paste some hands for us to look at

PS by no means am I saying your reckless, But the 78% KK wins i think is a little fudged that is a cash game stat and doesnt really apply to tournament decision making

 

[Rumme1]

do you change your preflop bet size when you hit premium hand?? If all of a sudden you put out a 3 x raise after 2.5 every raise b4 hand and I am sitting on AK I will put you on premium hand and see the flop with you. If Ace hits or straight draw do you keep bombing the pot? again you have a hud copy and paste some hands for us to look at

PS by no means am I saying your reckless, But the 78% KK wins i think is a little fudged that is a cash game stat and doesnt really apply to tournament decision making

The online sites I play at, many dont have the ability to make notes on a player....so it doesnt matter if I raise with KK a certain number of blinds, etc....

KK, is a losing hand for me, the majority of the time..its that simple...it should be a winning hand the majority of the time over the course of years of playing. Would you agree with this ?

 

[Rumme1]

do you change your preflop bet size when you hit premium hand?? If all of a sudden you put out a 3 x raise after 2.5 every raise b4 hand and I am sitting on AK I will put you on premium hand and see the flop with you. If Ace hits or straight draw do you keep bombing the pot? again you have a hud copy and paste some hands for us to look at

PS by no means am I saying your reckless, But the 78% KK wins i think is a little fudged that is a cash game stat and doesnt really apply to tournament decision making

When I flop a monster hand { rare occasion} I often get alot of value out of it, because I love to check strong hands to aggressive players. If I got
pokcet 9s..and flop comes 3- 6-9 rainbow...I would check that flop if I was in first position....and just smooth call when my opponent bets out.

Trust me, im not a amateur poker player...I retired at a young age, partly due to winnings I used to have in poker..but my luck in poker has been terrible for a few years now. Im not losing alot, because I have strong money management , but I know I should be winning alot of money but cold cards and bad beats do not allow it.

Out of the local poker players in the local games, we have about 20 of them that play...out of the 20 players...theres only 2 or 3 that I consider solid players , and im not scared to be in the game with them....I consider them to be as skilled as me. The other 17 players, are truly awful, and I should be beating them for a ton of money on a monthly basis...but im not.

 

[wildyetty]

The online sites I play at, many dont have the ability to make notes on a player....so it doesnt matter if I raise with KK a certain number of blinds, etc....

KK, is a losing hand for me, the majority of the time..its that simple...it should be a winning hand the majority of the time over the course of years of playing. Would you agree with this ?

Every hands a winner, and every hands a loser -Kenny Rodgers

and without actual hands to analyse I cant say much more than look at pot control.

 

[Rumme1]

Every hands a winner, and every hands a loser -Kenny Rodgers

and without actual hands to analyse I cant say much more than look at pot control.

If you are nearing the end of a tourney , and you are dealt KK...and someone goes all in ...you are gonna call with Kk, the majority of the time ?

Correct ? I understand that KK must be played differently in the begginging stages of a tourney.

 

[wildyetty]

If you are nearing the end of a tourney , and you are dealt KK...and someone goes all in ...you are gonna call with Kk, the majority of the time ?

Correct ? I understand that KK must be played differently in the begginging stages of a tourney.

why wont you post hands??? or was this a tilt thread? looks like your just defending and dont want advice

 

[pauloprcds]

yeeahh.. luck is always a factor, but if you play hundreds or thousand of tournaments in a month, then luck is just not there, you are good or not, simple as that.
The think in poker that overcome luck is just put the hours and have a big sampling, then luck is no longer a factor.

 

[Dorugremon]

Nonsense

This is just wrong on so many levels.

"Furthermore, its a game where players continually put all their money in preflop when they only have 2 cards which only represents 28% of their total hand. This truly is the definition of crapshoot poker".

Yes, it is true that you have a lot less information than you do at 7-Stud, where you have three cards, and can see all the door cards. However, every player has the same info: their two cards, and what counts is what you do with the information you have. That doesn't make it a crap shoot by any means.

A lot of rec-fish like that ATC can win at Hold 'Em, but the question is: will my two cards win often enough to justify playing them? Knowing this moves the situation far from a crap shoot. The players who mistakenly think it's a crap shoot are the game's biggest fish.

As for "crap shoot" games, Omaha comes closer since the preflop equities run a lot closer at Omaha. At Hold 'Em the best hand you can hold (AA) is a clear favourite. The best Omaha hand (AAKK-ds) isn't so far ahead.

"And their are numerous examples of big name poker players, who became famous and wealthy, by putting their whole stack in a pot as a 90% or more underdog, and getting lucky to win. A perfect example is Moneymaker in the wsop main event he won".

The luck factor is enormous in any tournament format. The blinds are periodically increasing while the stacks aren't. This eventually leads to everyone's playing a short stack, and you'll blind out if you wait for the nuts. Everyone else has the same problem, and you have to adjust to how they're playing. That means taking chances you won't take in a cash game. As for Moneymaker's play, he called with pocket 6's because he thought he was ahead of the villain's range, and he just happened to catch the very top of that range. He would have folded if he believed otherwise. As for the suckout, that was indeed lucky, but that's tournament poker ferya.

"NL hold em is really a crapshoot game when compared to other forms of poker that are limit/ pot limit . I was actually dissapointed when TV was able to transform the poker landscape and make NL hold em the big game of choice in the casinos and home games".

This actually reverses the logic. Fixed limit is more of a crap shoot type of game. You are frequently chasing with the worst hand because you're getting odds. Since the bet sizes are fixed, there isn't Thing One the holder of the lead hand can do about it. He just has to keep betting, hoping to either get some (incorrect) folds, or that his hand holds up. The best fixed limit player will frequently be playing his hand just like the most fish player would play the same hand in the same situation. The only difference between the two is that the good player plays like a fish when he's getting odds; the fishiest player plays like that all the time.

In NLHE, you can always bet large enough to make any worse hands chase with a -EV. If they get there and cost you a stack, oh well, SUX to be you. That doesn't change the fact that they weren't getting the odds and made a very bad call. Let them keep playing like that, and you'll get their money. Maybe not today, but eventually you will.

"I was actually dissapointed when TV was able to transform the poker landscape and make NL hold em the big game of choice in the casinos and home games".

It is what it is, and there are fads in Poker as there are in everything else. Yes, there was once a time when there wasn't hardly any Hold 'Em at all (they called the Golden Nugget in downtown Vegas the "House of Hold 'Em" for a reason) and what was there was fixed limit except for side games at the WSOP. You have to adjust to your vills, play what they want to play whether that be fixed limit, pot limit, or no limit, 7-Stud or Hold 'Em, or Draw or Lowball, or whatever.

I OTOH, was DEEEEELIGHTED when TV made NLHE the "main game". It was like giving an otter free run of a salmon cannery. I made the transition from FLHE to NLHE to take advantage as opposed to playing FLHE with the same old nits who couldn't adjust. (And let's not forget the larcenous rakes at the lowest limits.)

Rather than whine about something you can't change, why not do something about it? Get your NL play in order, exercise some tilt control, instead of wishing everything would go back to what it was like 25 years ago?

 

[smallfrie]

I dont agree...for example :

You have a NL hold em game...min buy in is $100....a above average player who doesnt have alot of money to risk , buys in for $100 . A average player buys in for $600 . More times then not, the average player will bust the above average player just based on stack size, and the ability to be a bully on the smaller stack by playing recklessly or forcing the above average player to get his whole stack in preflop and risk coin flip hands. In this type of scenario, LUCK, is once again a huge factor because the above average player with a $100 stack , is probably gonna call a all in with QQ...vs the average player with the big stack who pushes all in pre with AK or AQ...making the smaller stack have to coin flip.

The $600 stack , can risk all in preflop agasint the $100 stack and lose 4 coin flips in a row, before he busts out...the small stack can only lose 1 coin flip and he will bust out.

This is not skill, this is luck of the coin flip and small stack vs big stack . Once again, the small stack player may be better in poker, but his skill is not likely to overcome the luck factor and being able to overcome the big stacks chip advantage.

Please don't take offense but you are giving an example that "above average" players don't put themselves in. If a player is putting their self in a situation like you mentioned they are not above average. Strategic use of your stack to leverage your advantage against opponents is a skill and just one of many it takes to be successful.

 

[dbchristy]

Cant be luck..or you wouldnt see the same ppl at the wsop

 

[detroitjunkie]

I COMPLETELY agree that luck does not balance out for everyone through enough hands - this is a fallacy.

Luck is a variable, meaning it varies from person to person. It is possible for someone, in theory, to flip a coin once every day of his life and have it be heads...furthermore, the more people that are born the more likely this person is to exist. Its not luck that will even everything out, its the number of players that will fill out all the scenarios, Frank Tipler - a scientist - once stated that given enough time, everything that can happen will happen - meaning that eventually a person will exist, or already did exist - that will lose every time they have AA no matter how many times they get it, or may never get AA at all, most of us ride somewhere in the middle, slightly to one side or the other

What does this mean?
1. You are never "DUE" to win anything - EVER
2. You may never be at the same luck level as anyone else
3. You may have stats that are so grossly one sided it seems fake, or seems that you are a bad player

Unfortunately there is nothing you can do about it either, except hope that you are not the 'one' who is predetermined to lose every time.

 

[Aceplayer55]

I COMPLETELY agree that luck does not balance out for everyone through enough hands - this is a fallacy.

I think it does balance out after "enough" hands. The problem is that you dont live long enough to have "enough" hands. It definitely balances out after an infinite number of hands...

lol - infinite is "enough"

 

[detroitjunkie]

I think it does balance out after "enough" hands. The problem is that you dont live long enough to have "enough" hands. It definitely balances out after an infinite number of hands...

lol - infinite is "enough"

EXACTLY the problem, our lives are finite, which is why it is a fallacy

 

[detroitjunkie]

Ive written in the past about what I call the 'luck zone' - imagine luck is a string of heads and tails flips, where heads is a win and tails is a loss just for having a better hand than someone else. I have run programs that flip coins, I ran it 5 times for 1k flips, and each time there was a zone where one side hit over 25 times in a row. How many coin flips can exist in say 1000 years? At one a day thats 365,000 flips. With this number, we can suspect that in the flip model there would be a side that hits 9,000+ times in a row. This zone does exist somewhere on the time line, if your life falls into this zone, you will flip a coin and have it be tails (or say lose with a better hand) 9k+ times in a row., and that may encompass your entire life.

Obviously this is a 50/50 scenario, but in theory of large numbers items with worse odds will also appear a significant amount of times in a row

 

[wildyetty]

what makes me laugh is that people think online poker is random, when it comes o programing their is no such thing as random... poker sites take the advantage of dealing so many hands per second that makes it appear random. but after 2000 hands or so you see tendecies.when you email support ith this argument they say its varrieance which is bullshit!!!! its called you signed in at the wrong time. If jokerstars or any site claim ts a random deal thats a flt lie to your face because you cannot code random!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[detroitjunkie]

what makes me laugh is that people think online poker is random, when it comes o programing their is no such thing as random... poker sites take the advantage of dealing so many hands per second that makes it appear random. but after 2000 hands or so you see tendecies.when you email support ith this argument they say its varrieance which is bullshit!!!! its called you signed in at the wrong time. If jokerstars or any site claim ts a random deal thats a flt lie to your face because you cannot code random!!!!!!!!!!!

While it is true there is no such thing as a RNG for variables greater than 2 possibilities, pokerstars does come closest, and the bigger sites do a good job too I think.

PS uses a photon laser type thing to get the first 50% variable, then uses user mouse motions to further the deck order key, as well as clock times, and number of players logged in. This will give quite a random order to the deck almost every time. Even though these things (allegedly except the laser) are not truly random, meaning there are outside forces at work in decision making, its as close as you can get to having a live dealer.

At this level I conclude that you would NEVER be able to spot the tendencies at any big poker site, and would bet you everything I own that you can not prove that you can - so stop with the nonsense because that is what is BS.

 

[LukeSilver]

sigh it depends on what games your playing and volume If you only played high stakes mtts then yes after a few years it would be feasible to be a decent standard player compared to the field and have negative results. MTTS can have a lot of variance.

SNGS mostly have less it does depend on your game choice and volume. However even with MTTS a regular putting in large volumes/ doing it for a living is hoighly likely to have results that are positive if they are decent and negative if they are bad. if the Volume is sufficiently large it will be near impossible for a bad player to achieve positive results or a good player to have negative results.

yes if you have a large enough sample then something bizarre will have to happen to someone. the odds of me winning the lottery is millions to one so I dont assume I will win it I assume I wont. and get on with my life avoiding spending there.

technically if you want to get real technical it is possible though incredibly unlikely that a decent player could lose over a very large sample.

of course it is in theory possible that as I am walking down the street someone who is psychotic will be imagining that they are some super warrior as they walk around with a machete and my walk will put me in direct contact with them. they will see me as a demon decapitate me and walk down the street holding my head as a war trophy.

I dont really worry about this when I go out mind.

so yes there is a tiny chance your actually decent and just got unlucky, but realistically its fairly safe to believe data is representative if the confidence intervals are strong enough.

 

[Rumme1]

Please don't take offense but you are giving an example that "above average" players don't put themselves in. If a player is putting their self in a situation like you mentioned they are not above average. Strategic use of your stack to leverage your advantage against opponents is a skill and just one of many it takes to be successful.

completely disagree with your above statement.

I know many above average players , who only buy in local home games for the $100 minimum , while many of the loose fish buy in for $300 or more.

Just because a player doesnt buy in for the most amount of money/chips, does not mean he is a below average player { which is what you are insinuating} . One player I know, is definitely one of the best local players out of the 20 players in this area whom play every week in local games. He is a winning player , but is on a very low fixed retirement pension and does not want to risk a big buy in with these local games. Its stupid to claim that just because a player doesnt buy in for the most money , or buys in for the minimum, that player is a bad player or below average player.

Dont you people think about the things you claim, before you say them ?

 

[Rumme1]

it is highly likely to have results that are positive if they are decent and negative if they are bad. if the Volume is sufficiently large it will be near impossible for a bad player to achieve positive results or a good player to have negative results.


technically if you want to get real technical it is possible though incredibly unlikely that a decent player could lose over a very large sample.

.

As usual, claims about poker are made in very loose terms { like the above}

Tell us what is the meaning of " sufficiently large volume of poker playing " ?

Its a vague term, with no real meaning , kinda like someone being asked, " HOW LONG HAVE YOU PLAYED POKER" , and the guy replies...I played poker a long time. Such statements do not give any real exact data to anaylize.

I do know this for a FACT. Some pros make the false claim that everyone who plays poker/ gambles, over the longterm, has the exact same amount of bad luck and good luck, as all other players. This really annoys me because in my 33 years of playing every week, I know it is a flat out lie.

I will say it once again ,

A very luck player, that is just average, will beat a very unlucky player that is above average....and they can beat them on a very constant basis.

Ive been thru the streaks...Many years ago I had a good luck run that lasted a few years.....then it stopped..and then I went on a bad luck run that last many more years then the good luck run. The only thing that saved me from becoming a losing player, was MONEY MANAGEMENT. I was constantly losing to loose fish , who played way to many hands, called big bets to catch
miracle cards , would bet wrongly..and these fish would regularly chase me down or I was just getting cold cards for hours at each session and could not get wrapped up in big pots, to try and get the money from the fish at the table.

LUCK MEANS MUCH MORE TO POKER/gambling, THEN MOST PROS WILL EVER ADMIT . Why ? because its human nature for people who win money in gambling/ poker, to want to imply that their winnings had nothing to do with luck, and more to do with their skills. Its a complimentary thing, and we all like to be complimented , instead of thinking we win in poker due to good luck swings.

Someone mentioned that its true that we all have the exact same amount of luck, over the INFINITE long term....I also disagree with that, because it is a theory which can never be proven, because none of us live a infinite amount of time. I find it silly to claim something is 100% true, when that idea is merely a theory, which has never been proven, and can never be proven.

I play in a big game in my area , once a week with a min buy in of $300..pot limit....Some of the pots we have are $2000 or more { full table of 11 players} This game has been going on for over 3 years now, and guess what, the biggest winner in this game, is easily 1 of the worst players at the table. This guy is AWFUL....he bets badly, he makes to many stupid calls chasing hands that are not paying pot odds, etc....he doesnt have a clue how to calculate odds on a flop, he doesnt have a good memory of what cards people folded ,etc....and yet this guy is the big winner due to only ONE factor. His continual good luck at this one specific game. He used to play in 2 other local games, but he did not have good luck at those games and win at them , so he quit playing them after a few years . For some reason, this one local game, is his game, when it comes to continual good luck. This is something Ive noticed with my own play . There were some games that I ran very bad at locally, but there was one game that only ran for 4 months, which I had incredible good luck at , and was the big winner . Out of the 5 local games , I have only had great luck, in one of those games, which unfortunately busted up...the other local games are a brutal grind for me, where I must often sit at the table and get cold cards for 3-4 hours and not even win 1 hand. The only thing that keeps me from being a big loser in these bad luck games, is my money management.

 

[Aceplayer55]

Dont you people think about the things you claim, before you say them ?

the biggest winner in this game, is easily 1 of the worst players

Please dont yell at us.
You are a great poker player, winners are just lucky, NLHE is all luck, you have been unlucky, your luck will never change.
Anything else?

 

[dj11]

Poker is 85% skill, and 65% luck, and when you can understand that you will be a lot more happy on the felts.

 

[dj11]

Tell us what is the meaning of " sufficiently large volume of poker playing " ?

Use this figure; 1 million hands! Don't like that number?, OK, try 4,000 hands a month. That's 1000 hands a week, 52K a year, and it looks like it would take 20 years to get in a million hands. But trust us when we say that 1000 hands a week is not a lot of hands to a very large number of players. You know that some online players multi-table, and can do 1000 hands an hour!

My opinion is that with 20K hands, over a relative short period, can give almost anyone a workable approach to the game. If they time this (a function of the skill factor itself) with a lucky streak, they will enjoy happy results.

If they ignore their own mojo, and plunge recklessly into the game, meaning they play when they should not be playing, they will have unhappy results.

Its a vague term, with no real meaning , kinda like someone being asked, " HOW LONG HAVE YOU PLAYED POKER" , and the guy replies...I played poker a long time. Such statements do not give any real exact data to anaylize.

I do know this for a FACT. Some pros make the false claim that everyone who plays poker/ gambles, over the longterm, has the exact same amount of bad luck and good luck, as all other players. This really annoys me because in my 33 years of playing every week, I know it is a flat out lie.

I will say it once again ,

A very luck player, that is just average, will beat a very unlucky player that is above average....and they can beat them on a very constant basis.

Ive been thru the streaks...Many years ago I had a good luck run that lasted a few years.....then it stopped..and then I went on a bad luck run that last many more years then the good luck run. The only thing that saved me from becoming a losing player, was MONEY MANAGEMENT. I was constantly losing to loose fish , who played way to many hands, called big bets to catch
miracle cards , would bet wrongly..and these fish would regularly chase me down or I was just getting cold cards for hours at each session and could not get wrapped up in big pots, to try and get the money from the fish at the table.

LUCK MEANS MUCH MORE TO POKER/GAMBLING, THEN MOST PROS WILL EVER ADMIT . Why ? because its human nature for people who win money in gambling/ poker, to want to imply that their winnings had nothing to do with luck, and more to do with their skills. Its a complimentary thing, and we all like to be complimented , instead of thinking we win in poker due to good luck swings.

Someone mentioned that its true that we all have the exact same amount of luck, over the INFINITE long term....I also disagree with that, because it is a theory which can never be proven, because none of us live a infinite amount of time. I find it silly to claim something is 100% true, when that idea is merely a theory, which has never been proven, and can never be proven.

I play in a big game in my area , once a week with a min buy in of $300..pot limit....Some of the pots we have are $2000 or more { full table of 11 players} This game has been going on for over 3 years now, and guess what, the biggest winner in this game, is easily 1 of the worst players at the table. This guy is AWFUL....he bets badly, he makes to many stupid calls chasing hands that are not paying pot odds, etc....he doesnt have a clue how to calculate odds on a flop, he doesnt have a good memory of what cards people folded ,etc....and yet this guy is the big winner due to only ONE factor. His continual good luck at this one specific game. He used to play in 2 other local games, but he did not have good luck at those games and win at them , so he quit playing them after a few years . For some reason, this one local game, is his game, when it comes to continual good luck. This is something Ive noticed with my own play . There were some games that I ran very bad at locally, but there was one game that only ran for 4 months, which I had incredible good luck at , and was the big winner . Out of the 5 local games , I have only had great luck, in one of those games, which unfortunately busted up...the other local games are a brutal grind for me, where I must often sit at the table and get cold cards for 3-4 hours and not even win 1 hand. The only thing that keeps me from being a big loser in these bad luck games, is my money management.

You seem to have a huge fixation on luck. You my friend have clearly gotten out of phase with your mojo.

You mention you had a streak that lasted a few years? Well, in the normal distribution (statistics) of things, if you play 9 handed tables, and your streak was 2 years long, you can expect to have 16 YEARS of below average luck.

 

[smallfrie]

completely disagree with your above statement.

I know many above average players , who only buy in local home games for the $100 minimum , while many of the loose fish buy in for $300 or more.

Just because a player doesnt buy in for the most amount of money/chips, does not mean he is a below average player { which is what you are insinuating} . One player I know, is definitely one of the best local players out of the 20 players in this area whom play every week in local games. He is a winning player , but Its stupid to claim that just because a player doesnt buy in for the most money , or buys in for the minimum, that player is a bad player or below average player.

Dont you people think about the things you claim, before you say them ?

Okay it is now obvious you have no idea what you are talking about. An above average player would not do what you are saying and would be topping off his stack at every opportunity during the game. And if you are buying in short you are not an above average player. It sounds to me like you are a novice player with very little knowledge at all which is fine but don't argue points you know little to nothing about with people who do. lol "is on a very low fixed retirement pension and does not want to risk a big buy in with these local games." all the above average players are worried about losing money in games right? They are all playing games they can't afford right" lol Can only afford minimum buyin doesn't look for game he can play that fits in with his financial status and bankroll yeah he sounds like an above average player. Where do you guys play btw?

 

[smallfrie]

http://postimage.org/

 

[ph_il]

I dont agree...for example :

You have a NL hold em game...min buy in is $100....a above average player who doesnt have alot of money to risk , buys in for $100 . A average player buys in for $600 . More times then not, the average player will bust the above average player just based on stack size, and the ability to be a bully on the smaller stack by playing recklessly or forcing the above average player to get his whole stack in preflop and risk coin flip hands. In this type of scenario, LUCK, is once again a huge factor because the above average player with a $100 stack , is probably gonna call a all in with QQ...vs the average player with the big stack who pushes all in pre with AK or AQ...making the smaller stack have to coin flip.

The $600 stack , can risk all in preflop agasint the $100 stack and lose 4 coin flips in a row, before he busts out...the small stack can only lose 1 coin flip and he will bust out.

This is not skill, this is luck of the coin flip and small stack vs big stack . Once again, the small stack player may be better in poker, but his skill is not likely to overcome the luck factor and being able to overcome the big stacks chip advantage.

This is such a terrible example. For one, we don't know the blinds of the game and I'm assuming it's a cash game.

Are the effective stacks 200 BBs, 100 BBs, 50 BBs, 25 BBs? Less? More?

Also, you assume that these players are only playing shove/fold poker, which is just silly and again, a bad example. I'd like to see if an actual cash game player is really get into a flip situation PF with QQ and 100+ BBs. Unless it's opponent dependent, they probably wont be....unless i'm 100% mistaken.