Is there such a thing as a lucky/unlucky player?

[donkeyradish]

We all know people will make bad decisions and win, others will make good decisions and lose. Constantly. But over time the best players win chips from the worst players.

But with any random distribution there are a couple of results sitting at the extremes, beyond the boundaries of tolerance.

Could there be a brilliant poker player who despite his/her best efforts, has done nothing but lose money? And a complete novice who against all reasonable odds, has consistently won time and time again? The novice thinks he is a guru, but the real guru has probably long since given up playing.

You may say, sure such people hypothetically exist but every day their luck is just as likely to change.

But then it might not, & nobody lives for ever. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Cerril]

There's probably been several people whose luck at cards overbalanced the skill of opponents. He might never have played a game of cards, though.

That's one of those scenarios I like to. Given the number of coin flips a person calls over the course of their lifetime [is rather small], there has probably been a person who was never wrong about a coin flip. Might not have even seemed all that odd.

One thing though, without taking small sample sizes (i.e. people who have been constant winners/losers over a short period of time and then quit) the chance someone will exceed the boundaries really shrinks rapidly past a certain point, measured in numbers of hands. The unlucky 'pro' will probably quit, broke, long before he reaches that point but will go unnoticed. The lucky novice, on the other hand, if he plays more than recreationally (i.e. more than a hundred hands a week or so, and who wouldn't with those results), will test and pass those boundaries in a matter of months. The chances, in the theoretical situation, of such a person ever existing become vanishingly slim. In the infinite of course it's guaranteed but we're well shy of an infinite number of lifetimes spent playing poker (or lifetimes, period!).

[Nottom]

Sure, Chris Moneymaker is lucky ... he might be a decent player, but it doesn't really change the fact that he was lucky to win the WSOP (same for Fossilman and Varkoni and whoever wins next year)

I'm sure there is some poor guy out there that could be the next Doyle Brunson who played a few times and gave up after constnatly getting sucked out on and losing. He could have won millions had he stuck with it, but instead is working in a job he hates ... thats unlucky.

[Malarky]

Someone once said that over the course of a lifetime we'll all get the same cards -- I like to think of it like that.

There will be people that only play long enough for the positive variance to hit, but in the long run we all are going to experience the same run of cards.

[Dan Mezick]

[ QUOTE ]
Could there be a brilliant poker player who despite his/her best efforts, has done nothing but lose money? And a complete novice who against all reasonable odds, has consistently won time and time again? The novice thinks he is a guru, but the real guru has probably long since given up playing.


[/ QUOTE ]

There are certainly people like this floating around due to poker's wide variance. The good ones that lose short-term money likely lack tolerance for non-instant-gratification games.

[BarronVangorToth]

I think a lot of this type of thinking comes down to rationalizing winning and losing (well, let's be honest, far more often it's to rationalize losing -- whenever we win, it's due to "brilliant play," but losses are invariably due to "luck" or "suck-outs" or "whatever").

I doubt there's a top pro who, even now, doesn't have times where he will go a session or three and lose money. When anyone says they ALWAYS win, my BS-o-meter starts flashing away, and not due to some jealousy I have due to the fact that I realize I don't win every time I play, but I just don't believe that anyone always wins. People can always lose (you can play poorly enough that, even with good luck, lose) -- but always win ... I don't buy it. Not "always."

With that said, cards can break either way from time to time. I'm sure this board is full of great players who have gone one session ... two ... a week ... a month ... losing money.

It matters not the small sample. It matters the overall picture. Sure, in the short-term, you're annoyed that you lost $100 ... $1000 ... whatever -- but, in the long term, you know that last month you made $3000 and this month you lost $1500, so it nets out to the black, and that's what matters.

That, and constantly re-evaluating your game and figuring out ways to do better.

But as far as people who are just lucky / unlucky -- I don't buy it. Not over time. Short bursts happen (the random 100 big bets in an hour session where it's raining cards) but it all factors out in the end.

Luck, over time, is meaningless.


Barron Vangor Toth
www.BarronVangorToth.com

[pzhon]

The Law of Large Numbers will kick in if you do the same thing over and over. Your average result will get closer to your expected result. If you don't do the same thing over and over, but move up in stakes or quit, the Law of Large Numbers does not apply. It is not unusual for someone to be extremely lucky or extremely unlucky over the course of their lifetimes if they rarely play for substantial stakes, but play a few sessions for much higher stakes than normal.

I've played a lot of backgammon for money. Most of this was money sessions at $5-$25/point, or matches for $20-$200. However, I've had a few sessions for much more, and the results of those sessions determined whether I was lucky or unlucky for the month, and sometimes for the year. For example, a few times people wanted to play a martingale against me, doubling the stakes after each match they lost (and I was confident of getting paid). That may sound outrageous, but it is what happens in a single-elimination tournament.

Multi-table poker tournaments have an extremely high variance. The long run is very long. If you don't play thousands of tournaments, you can easily be very lucky or very unlucky. It's similar to playing a martingale a few times.

[Moyer]

It's believable until you start talking about playing 100,000 hands a year (or over 600,000 multitabling). Do that for five or ten or thirty years. It's pretty hard to win every coin flip.

[Avatar]

Marlaky, what the above posters are saying is, sure everyone gets the same cards over a lifetime, BUT, there are those on the far end of the spectrum that only received bad beats over and over, and quit before they reached the average card players playing span. So in fact, they never received the same cards as you and I have, and they never received the fair lay, that the game is supposed to offer (over a lifetime).

[SA125]

The law of averages backs up all the talk about luck balancing out and I believe it too. But without a doubt, some people are luckier than others.

I've played with many different guys. There's one guy I've played with for almost 4 yrs who is by far the luckiest player I've ever seen in my life. In fact, he's the only guy I can say I believe is really lucky.

He is the loosest, most ram and jam guy I've ever seen and manages to hit all the big pots. Over and over again. He's a major pot builder from the get go on almost every hand. Yet it's unreal how often his flush holds up or his boat will beat your nut flush in the huge family pots.

He wins far more often than anyone I've ever seen play the same way. Most of them are losers because their luck always runs out. If I didn't know better I'd say he'd have to be cheating to be so lucky for so long. I've never seen anything like it.

I know the response is "he'll eventually lose like all the other low percentage players". My answer is that everything isn't always equal. Winners don't always win the same, even after 10 yrs. Some people win more, lose less or walk home winners when others playing the same way walk home losers. Even over the long term.

Luck can't be a substitute for bad play. But there's no doubt it exists more for some than others.