do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

i've been thinking about it lately. i never seem to win the 50/50. it seems like my AA is the one that gets busted, but when i face AA i lose. is it in anyway possible that some people actually have better luck?

i just played my weekly home game. very frustrating. i seem to come out on the losing end week after week. i know that there's not another player there that could give you an explanation of pot odds, or any other basic poker principle. i do the right things... i bet enough to make others make mistakes according to the theory of poker... but i always get sucked out on. anybody could be playing anything, and call big raises with it all the way to a showdown. it's amazing how often people win playing like that! that's part of the reasoning behind my new 'junk card' theory. bad hands aren't that bad... just be aggressive and you'll be amazed how often you win. but i think lady luck may be plotting against me. actually, i think i may just have a hard time being aggressive enough in live play.

i would like to think that i've gotten used to the speed of online play, and that bad beats in real life are a different story. after all, it's a slow game... maybe 40 hands per hour... so i think it could take a year or more to know who is actually beating the game. never the less, it's hard to not feel like other players are 'luckier' than i am.

sometimes i feel that way online too. do some players have better luck, or are they just better players? i mean, how can you actually be a better player when you call an all-in with 95o and catch a full house to beat KK? it happens all the time. am i too timid a player to make those tpes of gambles? or will everything level off in the loooooonnngg ruuuuuuuunnn? hopefully the latter. poker is a cruel mistress.

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

[ QUOTE ]
i've been thinking about it lately. i never seem to win the 50/50. it seems like my AA is the one that gets busted, but when i face AA i lose. is it in anyway possible that some people actually have better luck?

i just played my weekly home game. very frustrating. i seem to come out on the losing end week after week. i know that there's not another player there that could give you an explanation of pot odds, or any other basic poker principle. i do the right things... i bet enough to make others make mistakes according to the theory of poker... but i always get sucked out on. anybody could be playing anything, and call big raises with it all the way to a showdown. it's amazing how often people win playing like that! that's part of the reasoning behind my new 'junk card' theory. bad hands aren't that bad... just be aggressive and you'll be amazed how often you win. but i think lady luck may be plotting against me. actually, i think i may just have a hard time being aggressive enough in live play.

i would like to think that i've gotten used to the speed of online play, and that bad beats in real life are a different story. after all, it's a slow game... maybe 40 hands per hour... so i think it could take a year or more to know who is actually beating the game. never the less, it's hard to not feel like other players are 'luckier' than i am.

sometimes i feel that way online too. do some players have better luck, or are they just better players? i mean, how can you actually be a better player when you call an all-in with 95o and catch a full house to beat KK? it happens all the time. am i too timid a player to make those tpes of gambles? or will everything level off in the loooooonnngg ruuuuuuuunnn? hopefully the latter. poker is a cruel mistress.

[/ QUOTE ]


I don't mean to be rude. But if you are going to believe people are lucky, and that this is the main "skill" that long term winners have.....you need to stop playing. Your post almost comes to the brink of saying that people who play poorly are the winners.

I don't know what else to say. I have a strong feeling you are playing at stakes which are too high for you as well. Start playing absolute micro limits where you can focus on your play regardless of your results.

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

See the thing is we only ever remember the bad beats.

Do you remember the time you called a raise with QJs flopped the open ended straight caught it and beat someones AAo? No but you won't forget it if you held the AAo.

You don't remember the coinflips you win cause you're due. Its just a normal occurance. I won a coinflip whoopdee. Yet when you loose a couple in a row you think damn my luck is poor.

Get PT you'll find you're not as unlucky as me [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

of course some people are luckier than others.
have u not seen unbreakable?

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

As others have pointed out, you are far more likely to remember the big beats than the small wins (or even the large ones!). You also don't see the winning hands other people held that they threw away, or that you chased them away with. This gives a skewed picture to the player, leading to belief in luck as an important factor.

So, the question you need to ask is "why am I losing". Either you're over comiting yourself to pots that you feel you "deserve" to win, or there's another hole in your game.

Remember, math is only one factor in the complete poker game. You might be far superior than the other players in this regard (I won't judge) but be lacking in the other skills. It could be something as simple as a tell you have, or perhaps it's simply a predictable table image.

Every game has holes. Some are so terrible you kick yourself for weeks after finding out. Recently I discovered two basic flaws. One was a tell. Turned out I was tossing in bigger demoniation chips in the pot when I was bluffing than when I had a real hand. I never realized this and god knows how much money it cost me the past year. The next flaw was a lack of agression with my hand. I knew the math and based my game on a worst case scenario. Although I knew intellectually that being a calling station is a bad flaw, I couldn't push other players when I had a slight edge.

Point is, players who believe they are simply being unlucky are players who are not honestly looking at their game.

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

[ QUOTE ]
i've been thinking about it lately. i never seem to win the 50/50. it seems like my AA is the one that gets busted, but when i face AA i lose.

[/ QUOTE ]

you lost me right here.

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

[ QUOTE ]
i've been thinking about it lately. i never seem to win the 50/50. it seems like my AA is the one that gets busted, but when i face AA i lose. is it in anyway possible that some people actually have better luck?

i just played my weekly home game. very frustrating. i seem to come out on the losing end week after week. i know that there's not another player there that could give you an explanation of pot odds, or any other basic poker principle. i do the right things... i bet enough to make others make mistakes according to the theory of poker... but i always get sucked out on. anybody could be playing anything, and call big raises with it all the way to a showdown. it's amazing how often people win playing like that! that's part of the reasoning behind my new 'junk card' theory. bad hands aren't that bad... just be aggressive and you'll be amazed how often you win. but i think lady luck may be plotting against me. actually, i think i may just have a hard time being aggressive enough in live play.

i would like to think that i've gotten used to the speed of online play, and that bad beats in real life are a different story. after all, it's a slow game... maybe 40 hands per hour... so i think it could take a year or more to know who is actually beating the game. never the less, it's hard to not feel like other players are 'luckier' than i am.

sometimes i feel that way online too. do some players have better luck, or are they just better players? i mean, how can you actually be a better player when you call an all-in with 95o and catch a full house to beat KK? it happens all the time. am i too timid a player to make those tpes of gambles? or will everything level off in the loooooonnngg ruuuuuuuunnn? hopefully the latter. poker is a cruel mistress.

[/ QUOTE ]

Selective memory.

Or you suck at poker.

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

[ QUOTE ]
Do you remember the time you called a raise with QJs flopped the open ended straight caught it and beat someones AAo?

[/ QUOTE ]

I sure hope their AA was offsuit--otherwise the dealer has some 'splainin to do. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] Sorry, couldn't resist.

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

luck is a huge factor in short term poker. the key to getting over that problem is having a large enough bank roll to deal with short term loses. It's also easy to let those loses weaken your play, so you end up losing alot more on top of the bad beats.

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

Doyle Brunson has said learning to manage your luck; things like what cards you seem to catch, or when to play trash, is a real key. I always catch tens and jacks

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

If you seriously believe you have worse luck than everyone else then why not start staking your opponents?

Less radically, it may help you to know that your paranoid fantasy about being the unluckiest guy in the world occurs to most players at some point, a bit like the way most 12 year olds imagine that everyone in the world apart from them might be a zombie.

Of course, someone somewhere really is the unluckiest guy in the world, but I'll lay odds of at least 10,000 to 1 that you're not him.

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

[ QUOTE ]
Do you remember the time you called a raise with QJs flopped the open ended straight caught it and beat someones AAo? No but you won't forget it if you held the AAo.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't remember that one, but I remember the hand where I crushed AA suited. [img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img] I didn't even need cards!

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

let me dispute a few points that were made.
1. i don't play above my limit. i play small time SnG's.
2. i'm not a losing player.
3. i don't think that i'm the most unlucky guy in the world.. i also realize that everybody has those thoughts occasionally.

my post wasn't completely irrational. i know taht bad beats stick out more than small wins. i took that into consideration. what i meant was that i haven't won 50% of the coinflip situations over a lot of hands.. i have my AA cracked much more often than i crack other players. what that means is that anything i do win is despite luck. i guess an easy argument can be that ALL poker profit is despite luck, and i understand that.

never the less, if you win less than 50% of the coinflip hands doesn't that make you less lucky than the next guy? is it possible to play an entire 'career' of poker and come out below that 50% mark? i think it might be....

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

Some people who are lucky at one thing are unlucky at others.

For example, it's well known people who are unlucky at cards are lucky at love. (Are you one of them?)

Also - a lot of people who are lucky at cards are unlucky when it comes to personalities. Ie, they're asswipes.

Some people are born to fathers who beat them. Some people are born rich, or poor, or in-between. Some people marry the wrong woman. Others are lonely their whole lives.

Some people wreck their cars on their 21st birthdays, and never walk again.

What I'm saying is that despite hackneyed replies above, it's entirely possibly you've had a lot of bad luck when it comes to cards.

But I'll bet you've had some good luck when it comes to other things.

Haven't you?

Think about it next time your aces get cracked, smile, and say, "nice hand."

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

that was a very happy go lucky response. i like the way you think. you're right.. i have very little to complain about in 'real life'. poker is just a game for me, not a profession... but it does drive me crazy. i don't knwo how u pro guys do it. maybe you're the lucky ones i was talking about. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

[ QUOTE ]
is it possible to play an entire 'career' of poker and come out below that 50% mark? i think it might be....

[/ QUOTE ]

Of course it is.

[img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

[ QUOTE ]
is it in anyway possible that some people actually have better luck?

[/ QUOTE ]

No.

/mc

I have a suspicion...
 

At the lower levels... variance is a bitch.

I suspect that you are overestimating the effect of skill vs. luck in your games.

Poker's gambling. Its like playing a game of chess for $1 and afterwards flipping a coin for $3.

How much have you lost over what period of time at what level? Without that information, we can't tell you if you've been unlucky.

Most importantly, you might have had more than your share of bad beats... but that doesn't mean that you are more likely to continue getting them.

The guy that thinks he gets 10s and Js is a fool.

Re: I have a suspicion...
 

[ QUOTE ]

Poker's gambling. Its like playing a game of chess for $1 and afterwards flipping a coin for $3.


[/ QUOTE ]

Great way to put it [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] !!

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

[ QUOTE ]
never the less, if you win less than 50% of the coinflip hands doesn't that make you less lucky than the next guy? is it possible to play an entire 'career' of poker and come out below that 50% mark? i think it might be....

[/ QUOTE ]

sure it's possible. none of them are really 50%, so if you're calling more hands where you're at 48% than when you're at 52%, you'll end up below the mark. unless you're at something like 40% win % when you're a 52% fav, i wouldn't worry about it.

and anyway, who cares what % of the coinflips you win in the end. the real test is how much $$ are you +/- in coinflips?

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

I think some players are luckier than others perhaps over the course of the year. Some people are going to be in the top 5% luckiest, and some will be in the bottom 5% unluckiest. If you were at a roulette wheel, and lost 15 out of 16 betting on red, that would be cruddy luck. It would take a while for that all to balance out.

Look at what can happen in poker..

You can be patient and wait for good hands.. only for them to get cracked..

You can build up some pots with draws that never come in..

Your draws can come in and you still lose.

You can go cold flopping sets..

When you do flop a set no one is in the pot

When you flop a set some chump cathes runner's for a straight..

You run into a bigger set.

You flop a flush and get run down by an ace of that flush.

You raise AK and totally miss the flop

AA gets cracked, and cracked again.

You get a huge hand, only to run into a bigger hand..

You get a huge hand and no one calls..


just chill out man, you can run bad for a long time, and the long run truly is long. However, things will even out. And you will run hot, and things will go "as their supposed to."

My friend won $1100 playing 3/6 in his first week on Party. (He has a good amount of experience playing, he's read books, he's a solid player, IMO.) It looked like he was going to own party poker in another week. And then, the cards stopped coming! He's back down to $350. He's no longer king of the world. He's the same player he was a week ago, if not better. He's just running cold.

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

i think that if u start to think ur unlucky
you better quit for that day and play a few days later after checking ur play....and try to figure out why ur "unlucky":)

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

this is poker.

the 2 plus 2 war forum server must be down.

long term, long term

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

The prerequisite to someone sucking out is that they must first be in a losing situation.

If you are a good player, your opponents are going to be sucking out on you a lot more than you will suck out on them. That's the nature of luck, it favors the bad player because the bad player relies upon it more. However, even over a pretty short run, the money gained from constantly being in 70/30 situations will show itself.

As far as coinflip situations, it's very possible that you tend to put yourself on the bad end of the coinflip. This is most often achieved by laying down the small and mid pocket pairs while calling with the two big cards.

It makes sense: You are a good player, so you know that your mid pocket pair is either about 50/50 or is a huge dog. So you lay it down to a big raise. On the flip side, you know that your AK is about 50/50 with anything other than AA or KK and has a big advantage over non-pairs, so you call. However, you are constantly at a 55/45 situation against you, so you'll end up losing the 'coinflips' greater than 50% of the time.

Pokerstove:
Hand 1: 44.7032 % [ 00.45 00.00 ] { AKs, AKo }
Hand 2: 55.2968 % [ 00.55 00.00 ] { QQ-77 }

The coinflips aren't exactly coinflips.

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

[ QUOTE ]
what i meant was that i haven't won 50% of the coinflip situations over a lot of hands.. i have my AA cracked much more often than i crack other players.

[/ QUOTE ]

1a - How do you know that you are losing more than 50% of the coin flips?
1b - you do realize that the term "race" or "coin flip" isn't exactly accurate. These situations are not exactly 50/50. In many cases the pocket pair is a slight favorite (55:45). Over your life if you enter every "coin flip" as the favorite, you'd win more than 50%. Are you getting $$$ in with AK a lot? If you were to play AKs vs QQ every hand for the rest of your life you'd better have QQ or you're going to go broke.

2 - How are you playing your ACES? If you are playing them too cute or slow then yes, they are going to get cracked more often. If you are playing them fast and strong and getting them into heads up situations then you're fine.
2a - Its not how often they get cracked, its how much $$$ you are winning (or god-forbid losing) with them long term. If you are playing limit and get AA and raise with them but still get 6 callers then the chances that the AA will get cracked increase... but the $$$ that you win when they DON'T get cracked increases as well, while your investment into the pot stays the same. Its not about the # of pots its about the Benjamins!
2b - YES, at low limits its very very likely that the number of times you're aces get cracked is more than the number of times you crack other peoples aces - This is because at low limits you usually have 3 or 4 or ... 8 villains gunning for your aces, even in a raised pot AND if you are talking about the number of times you crack aces, you are only 1 person against those aces. I was going to suggest that you look at how often other peoples aces are being cracked BUT you can't really do that because often when they are cracked they get mucked and you don't know about it... so you still have a perception problem.
2c - when you raise with AA and everyone folds do you get upset that no one called? Just wondering...

In Short:
QUIT YOUR BIYATCHIN' or Call Phil Helmuth and commisserate!

That's what ThisHo has to say about this!

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

[ QUOTE ]
is it in anyway possible that some people actually have better luck?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes and no. If you're asking whether it's possible that you have been extra unlucky in the past, then the answer is yes. There is absolutely no guarantee that cards break even over even a long period of time. (Do a cold simulation on two players w/ identical profiles and you'll see that one player may well be up substantially over a long period of time, tho the profit as a % of $$ wagered will be negligible in the long run). Now does this means that all the guys who are pros and are making money merely the ones who've been lucky. NO. Because luck, as a % of money wagered, becomes less and less over time and an expert player, even if he has been unlucky, would still have had enough of an edge to be profitable. Of course he would not have been as profitable as a similarly skilled player who has run better. My rough rule of thumb is if you're not showing profit after 50,000 hands, you're almost certainly not beating the game.

Now if you're asking whether some people are just luckier than others and this luck will continue into the future. Then the answer is a resounding NO. Regardless of what's happened in the past, in the future no one will be luckier than anyone else.
I suspect that most people who complain about luck have some major flaws in their game. And complaining about luck merely distracts you from focusing on what about your game you can improve. Your game is not perfect. think about improving it rather than complaining about luck.

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

Some people are luckier than others. It is just inherent in randomness and nothing anybody can do anything about.

It is also fundamentally meaningless, and should have no bearing on your play. Over a very, very, very longterm, there shouldn't be any noticeable difference, but in practice some people are going to have lucky years and other people are not. Just the way it is.

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

[ QUOTE ]
I don't know what else to say. I have a strong feeling you are playing at stakes which are too high for you as well. Start playing absolute micro limits where you can focus on your play regardless of your results.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is really good advice. I will take it one step further. Try play money tournaments (both S&G and multi-table) for learning. After the first couple orbits, the crazies that plague the play money world are busted out, and most of those left are people genuinely trying to learn.


GG

Re: do some people really have better luck?(rant... be prepared)
 

[ QUOTE ]
let me dispute a few points that were made.
1. i don't play above my limit. i play small time SnG's.

never the less, if you win less than 50% of the coinflip hands doesn't that make you less lucky than the next guy? is it possible to play an entire 'career' of poker and come out below that 50% mark? i think it might be....

[/ QUOTE ]

I believe you hit the problem. How often are your 50/50 situations heads up vs multiway? In small time SNG's the call with anything to the end ratio is way out of kilter.

Last night I was steaming well beyond reason after 3 straight cheap SNG's busting me out with AA, KK, and flopping a set of Q's. I was called by 56 off pre-flop and lost to a river straight. Then called by 92 and lost to a flopped 2 pair. Finally, my set of Q's was busted when the callers (2) hit a flush and a straight, on the river 7 and 8 high respectfully.

Today, I sat down to clear a bonus at a $0.50/$1.00 NL table with $50. I was with a maniac and a uber tight rock. I left that table in less than 30 min with $140 (over half the table $$) by creaming the maniac and pushing the rock off everything. I cleared $2 of the bonus. I'll get the rest later today.

The differance? I was heads up with the nutcase and a bit better than 50/50 instead of facing 3 people on draws.