[Closed] the luck factor...

It's pretty simple really. Luck is a huge factor in the short term, and skill is a huge factor in the long term.

What most people fail to realize is that even though the probabilities point towards certain results, ANYTHING can happen.

Imagine there was a machine that flipped coins very quickly 24 hours a day.

After millions and millions of flips, probability dictates that the results will be close to 50/50.

MOST of the time that is exactly what will happen. But during those millions of flips, there could be long stretches where tails comes up 5x as often as heads.

Also consider what would happen if you had 1 million of these machines flipping coins simultaneously. Most of them would end up close to 50/50, but there would inevitably be one machine that suffers extreme deviation and ends up at 70/30.

When you can come to terms with this, you will see that even though a skilled player has an advantage in the long term, there are some people that literally run bad for their entire life. And there are also bad players who run good for their entire life.

At the end of the day you have to try to gain a small edge on your opponents and hope that it holds up under the variance.

I agree but luck can also affect you on the long run. If you hit a sick downswing you'll play inevitably more or less worse. And that means smaller ROI/BBper100h on the long term.

If you have a super heater and then a huge downswing... well, if you didn't deleted the poker platform and set your computer in fire, the same thing will happen.

So i'm talking about being variance-luck (never heard that before, wtf!??). If you had no feelings it woudn't matter but...

There are many opinions regarding how much is the luck factor in (holdem) poker. Some people say that poker is 50% skill and 50% luck. Others say it's 70-30, others incline to the 90-10 proportion. There are some players, successful players, that consider that poker is (nearly) 100% skill.

My opinnion - the higher number of hands, the lower factor of luck.

in party poker the big game i think david "devilfish" elliot said it was 60% luck and 40% skill.

I pretty much agree with it. If you have bad luck you simply wont win. and by that i mean the worst case scenario happening every time, there's no way you can make profit.

In the long run ofcourse good players make profit. but thats so old, everyone says it lol and tired of hearing it myself.

it is 10 % luck, 20% skill
15% concentrated power of will
5 % pleasure, 50% percent pain

Originally posted by raun
it is 10 % luck, 20% skill
15% concentrated power of will
5 % pleasure, 50% percent pain

genius lol

Originally posted by raun
it is 10 % luck, 20% skill
15% concentrated power of will
5 % pleasure, 50% percent pain

And 100% reason to remember the name ♦

inf4my, I'm afraid that you misunderstood me and my question.

you don't have to explain the theory of probabilities to me, because I am very familiar with it, long before even thinking to play poker for fun.

All poker theoreticians and strategists say that if you want to win in the long run, you sohuld play a strategy profitable in the long run. This means that, if you don't play profitably in the long run, you will eventually go broke, rather sooner than later. So, taking it a little further, this means that players that don't play profitably in the long run and simply RELY on the luck factor (e.g. the player calls a 10$ bet allin on a 1$ pot with 2 outs) should go broke very soon.

I hope (most of) you agree with me up to this point.

I also hope that I'm not the only one that has encountered a lot of luckers every day in this game.

So, once again, my question is:

Why (or how) do people that simply RELY on luck survive in this game (on the long run)???

Thank you.

P.S. I understand that this topic is much too boring for an instructor to answer/comment here

It's more of a psychological than mathematical question.

The answer lies in all those people losing houses on slot machines in casinos...

In texas holdem you will find yourself in a coinflip situation very often. Since variance at 50 / 50 situation is way higher than lets say 80 / 20 (eg you hold a bigger pp than villain), you could say that you need to be lucky a few times. However, this is short term because at the end you will win as many hands as you will lose.

In conclusion, if you understood anything, you could say that the luck factor is null long-term wise, and it's all about the skills.

On the other side we have the deepstack tournaments, where the luck factor weighs more than the cash games since you have a definite nr of places that are paid and you will go through coinflips at different stages and phases and the pots vary all the time.

You asked how bad players can survive in the long run, and I explained that the "long run" is much much longer than you are assuming it is.

Those players are experiencing positive variance, end of story.

Show me one donkey that is profitable over a sample of 10 million hands and then we can have a serious discussion about how that is possible.

I think you guys are missing out the fact that those donkeys are pretty much ppl that like to enjoy a bit of poker and so they deposit a certain amount of money and just go and have fun...

They are not thinking in the way of....hmmm, if i keep calling these all ins with hands that have only 1 or 2 outs I'm gonna lose all my money...I think it's more about that feeling of doubling up their stack or the thrill of possibly getting a cool hand while playing poker online for real money....

Don't know, just my point of view...

Um, is that a serious question?

They stay in the game because they redeposit from real life income.

Originally posted by Hahaownedlolz
in party poker the big game i think david "devilfish" elliot said it was 60% luck and 40% skill.

I pretty much agree with it. If you have bad luck you simply wont win. and by that i mean the worst case scenario happening every time, there's no way you can make profit.

In the long run ofcourse good players make profit. but thats so old, everyone says it lol and tired of hearing it myself.

100% skill over multiple year time-frame and millions of hands.

60%/40% over 1000 hands played on a tv show.

Originally posted by staicu74

Why (or how) do people that simply RELY on luck survive in this game (on the long run)???

It's easy, they use the BUTTON OF DOOM that none of us do, the big DEPOSIT button

Originally posted by Fongie

Originally posted by staicu74

Why (or how) do people that simply RELY on luck survive in this game (on the long run)???

It's easy, they use the BUTTON OF DOOM that none of us do, the big DEPOSIT button

^^havn't you ever seen those people who are losing like 5k,10k,even 20k over 600-700k sample sizes.. they just love to play the game (regardless of losing in the long run) and must have a great jobs or something lol

Originally posted by inf4my
You asked how bad players can survive in the long run, and I explained that the "long run" is much much longer than you are assuming it is.

It's quite simple, they don't. There is a whole group of the player base who makes a deposit and then plays with just that money until they go broke. Then the next week, month, or whatever they deposit another amount of money and see how far that goes.

If you were to track them over a period of time you would see that they only deposit and never withdrawal yet their balance doesn't steadily increase. In fact usually it shows an amount of variance that would make even a short-stacker sick.

Just get buddy-buddy with one of the online poker room's poker managers and listen to their stories. These guys gets reports on players like this!

if you rely on luck poker becomes blackjack/roulette/bingo but there's a lot more fun. The twist is that they believe they can sometime be profitable, which is an unexpected bonus...

They play to have fun and MAYBE, just maybe eventually they'll end up becoming winning players (theoretically they will, if they learn from their mistakes).

And roulette and blackjack players are many so draw the conclusions...

No matter how you look at it poker is not 100% skill.

In the long term good players earn money but that doesn't mean its 100% skill..

(Since for example when you have top pair you will always be outkicked, when you have a straight the other person always has a flush. when you have a full house they always have quads. Since there is no luck factor. your saying that if thats the case everytime a good player can still make money. Its extremely unlikely probably even less likely then winning the lottery. but if its 100% skill it shouldn't matter)