D
dlam
Visionary
Silver Level
Of Course luck is big factor in tournaments
Especially when all the money is in preflop
When I get deep in tournaments I will win most of my coin flips and get lucky on the ones that I am way behind. Not the Ideal way to play
Especially when all the money is in preflop
When I get deep in tournaments I will win most of my coin flips and get lucky on the ones that I am way behind. Not the Ideal way to play
CheezeWiz
Legend
Platinum Level
Can You Win A Poker Tournament Without Luck?
I would say Yes, but that would be a VERY GOOD RUN! More likely 99.9% of the time, not happening.
I think I recall hearing a Barry Greenstein quote... but I searched for it online and I could not find it so... to the best of my recollection, he said.... paraphrasing...
It is easy to win the wsop Main Event, all you have to do is GET ALL YOUR CHIPS IN BAD and WIN seven times.
Scale it down, of course, for smaller fields, but I think that pretty much sums it up...
Best of Luck at The Tables All,
CheezeWiz
I would say Yes, but that would be a VERY GOOD RUN! More likely 99.9% of the time, not happening.
I think I recall hearing a Barry Greenstein quote... but I searched for it online and I could not find it so... to the best of my recollection, he said.... paraphrasing...
It is easy to win the wsop Main Event, all you have to do is GET ALL YOUR CHIPS IN BAD and WIN seven times.
Scale it down, of course, for smaller fields, but I think that pretty much sums it up...
Best of Luck at The Tables All,
CheezeWiz
K
kamciono5
Rock Star
Silver Level
100% not. It's impossible because during the tournament you play so many hands and variation is extremely high. I can clearly say that winners of a tournaments aren't the best players, but just luckers.
You can look on tournament which i played today on gg i had better cards, but anyway i lost to the same guy
You can look on tournament which i played today on gg i had better cards, but anyway i lost to the same guy
German629
Legend
Platinum Level
Hello, Everyone! I think, Luck is one from important elements, as in Poker, so in Life in whole...
Therefore, by my opinion, that to archieve the good results, as in Life, so in Poker,
Luck is necessary in anyway!..:burnout::top:
Therefore, by my opinion, that to archieve the good results, as in Life, so in Poker,
Luck is necessary in anyway!..:burnout::top:
Rob Hobson
Legend
Loyaler
Luck play roles at every game, every sport.
It's really not possible win a tourney (even a cash game) without luck. The fact is, the steady winners manage well the luck and the lack of it. And remember: Luck never gives, only lends.
It's really not possible win a tourney (even a cash game) without luck. The fact is, the steady winners manage well the luck and the lack of it. And remember: Luck never gives, only lends.
Pokerpoet2
Legend
Loyaler
There will always be luck in any card game and any one can suck out with the worst hands possible. only yesterday I was very nearly busted out of a game on-line when I played Ace Queen all-in after hitting trip queens against a pocket pair of kings that hit the river.
That's Poker, but it left me with only 3 BB and I decided to shove with any cards dealt so I could bust out and start a new table, next hand was 7/4 off and I shoved only to be called by 4 players as it was a bounty hunter game and they were all after busting me and the flop came 7,7,4, Gave me a boat and I made 12 BB and managed to get back into the game and eventually win it.
So Lady Luck smiled on me that time.
That's Poker, but it left me with only 3 BB and I decided to shove with any cards dealt so I could bust out and start a new table, next hand was 7/4 off and I shoved only to be called by 4 players as it was a bounty hunter game and they were all after busting me and the flop came 7,7,4, Gave me a boat and I made 12 BB and managed to get back into the game and eventually win it.
So Lady Luck smiled on me that time.
LitPavel
Rock Star
Silver Level
Once I played at a table with an aggressive player, he always raised and re-raised, and I often folded my hands on the turn or river, and I wasn't the only one to fold. I only managed to get the best hand a few times but all the times he opened the cards he had a very weak hand. That is, he always played as if he had a monster on his hands, although in reality he often had only 57 for example or 102, and this game helped him build a good stack. Then I went all in with AK against his A7 and lost a pair of 77. And it's not luck it's just that his game allowed him to collect a lot of chips and if you have a lot of chips you can play a larger range of hands which reduces your chances of collecting a good hand even with 72. Therefore, I believe that you need to improve your game and rely only on yourself, luck is a nice addition. If you only blame luck, more than half of the poker players are losers, which is not the case.
H
horseshoebhole
Rock Star
Silver Level
That's a definitive no from me dawg. The best in the world know when to apply pressure and when not to, but eventually you run into it. You can only " not have it " so many times and steal the pot. It is what it is. I think that's why it's important to think about things like long term success and overall cashes in tournament play.
Alizona
Visionary
Bronze Level
[Edit to add: Yes, I'm ignoring the fact that "good" poker players earn many of their chips via bluffing, this is certainly true, and its why "good" players can avoid much of the coin-flipping I describe below... my discussion is intended more for the casual and straight-forward players to learn from.]
This is a great question - "Can you win a tourney without luck?" - and the answer is a clear and definite NO.
In a tournament, when you play a single hand of poker versus another opponent (or two or three opponents), each hand will have a certain "equity" value which is based on probabilities. There are software programs that can easily compute the equity of hand matchups at all points - preflop or postflop. Just type in the known cards and the computer does the rest and spits out the percentage value for the possibility of each player winning that hand of poker. Pretty simple stuff and there are plenty of hand equity calculators out there.
So this is the game of "tournament poker". We play hundreds of poker hands over many hours, and after the tournament is concluded, we can look back at the hand history summary and we can compute all the equity values for all of the hands that we played...
...and what you will see, and should realize, is that a "poker tournament" consists of a whole bunch of preflop equity values such as 50-50, 60-40, 82-18... ignoring chopped pots, two poker hands facing off against each other should always add up to 100%. Many of these matchups will be very close to 50-50, which means we are essentially "flipping a coin" to see who wins that hand. And in a tournament, this means we are going to flip a coin many times. If we lose a lot of these "flips", we'll likely bust out. In fact - and here's where the luck factor ALWAYS comes into play - the only way we're likely to win this tournament is if we win most of our flips.
In a college-level statistics class, you learn all about the odds of flipping a coin and seeing how many heads in a row you can flip. 3 heads in a row is pretty easy and happens commonly, but 8 heads in a row almost never happens. This is basic probability, 2 heads in a row will happen 1 time out of 4 (25%), 3 heads in a row is 1 out of 8 (12.5%), 4 heads in a row is 1 out of 16 (6.25%) and so on, the odds keep dropping with each consecutive head toss.
This coin flipping exercise is almost identical to a poker tournament. Each hand we choose to play in the tournament is like one of our coin flips. And we'll be making a lot of such coin flips as the tournament progresses. As we all know, lose just one big coin flip pot, and our tournament hopes are crushed... so in order to win a tournament, we litererally have to flip that proverbial coin and hope it comes up heads 10 or 12 or 15 or more times in a row... when it does, we'll crush the tournament and think we're the greatest player in the world!! But it's really just odds, probabilities, equities, doing their thing. Yes you NEED luck to win a tournament - the luck you need is to have all your biggest hands be winners, even if you get AA 100 times and win every time, that is still lucky!!! You should lose 1 out of 5 times you play AA against any 2 random cards (check the equity calculator), so if you win at a higher rate than that and go on to win the tournament because of it...well, you got "lucky" and you "ran above expectation".
It's a great question to ponder, and once you understand that you cannot possibly ever remove the "luck factor" from tournaments... then just decide to embrace it, have fun with it, when you have an unlucky streak despite having the best preflop hand, you can shrug it off because you now understand its all a part of the game and there's no sense getting angry or upset at it since it's just the nature of this game... being a winning tournament player requires an immense amount of patience and stamina, to conquer the long hours of losing so we can find those special tournaments where we run like a God... Best wishes at the tables!
This is a great question - "Can you win a tourney without luck?" - and the answer is a clear and definite NO.
In a tournament, when you play a single hand of poker versus another opponent (or two or three opponents), each hand will have a certain "equity" value which is based on probabilities. There are software programs that can easily compute the equity of hand matchups at all points - preflop or postflop. Just type in the known cards and the computer does the rest and spits out the percentage value for the possibility of each player winning that hand of poker. Pretty simple stuff and there are plenty of hand equity calculators out there.
So this is the game of "tournament poker". We play hundreds of poker hands over many hours, and after the tournament is concluded, we can look back at the hand history summary and we can compute all the equity values for all of the hands that we played...
...and what you will see, and should realize, is that a "poker tournament" consists of a whole bunch of preflop equity values such as 50-50, 60-40, 82-18... ignoring chopped pots, two poker hands facing off against each other should always add up to 100%. Many of these matchups will be very close to 50-50, which means we are essentially "flipping a coin" to see who wins that hand. And in a tournament, this means we are going to flip a coin many times. If we lose a lot of these "flips", we'll likely bust out. In fact - and here's where the luck factor ALWAYS comes into play - the only way we're likely to win this tournament is if we win most of our flips.
In a college-level statistics class, you learn all about the odds of flipping a coin and seeing how many heads in a row you can flip. 3 heads in a row is pretty easy and happens commonly, but 8 heads in a row almost never happens. This is basic probability, 2 heads in a row will happen 1 time out of 4 (25%), 3 heads in a row is 1 out of 8 (12.5%), 4 heads in a row is 1 out of 16 (6.25%) and so on, the odds keep dropping with each consecutive head toss.
This coin flipping exercise is almost identical to a poker tournament. Each hand we choose to play in the tournament is like one of our coin flips. And we'll be making a lot of such coin flips as the tournament progresses. As we all know, lose just one big coin flip pot, and our tournament hopes are crushed... so in order to win a tournament, we litererally have to flip that proverbial coin and hope it comes up heads 10 or 12 or 15 or more times in a row... when it does, we'll crush the tournament and think we're the greatest player in the world!! But it's really just odds, probabilities, equities, doing their thing. Yes you NEED luck to win a tournament - the luck you need is to have all your biggest hands be winners, even if you get AA 100 times and win every time, that is still lucky!!! You should lose 1 out of 5 times you play AA against any 2 random cards (check the equity calculator), so if you win at a higher rate than that and go on to win the tournament because of it...well, you got "lucky" and you "ran above expectation".
It's a great question to ponder, and once you understand that you cannot possibly ever remove the "luck factor" from tournaments... then just decide to embrace it, have fun with it, when you have an unlucky streak despite having the best preflop hand, you can shrug it off because you now understand its all a part of the game and there's no sense getting angry or upset at it since it's just the nature of this game... being a winning tournament player requires an immense amount of patience and stamina, to conquer the long hours of losing so we can find those special tournaments where we run like a God...
Best wishes at the tables!
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R
redsfan
Rock Star
Silver Level
Especially in free roll tourneys i think its almost always luck.How many times do you go all in with by far the best hand in a free roll,with lets say AA ,and the person that went all in with a 35 or something along those lines and wins the hand.Most free rolls are brutal'