Please explain for a friend

[Beer and Pizza]

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Whoa, how the hell did this guy get into ANY law school?

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This type of guy is why junk science witnesses proliferate in the courts. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[Homer]

Did he really go to Harvard? He is misunderstanding the law of large numbers.

[Homer]

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Harvard law not MIT math...enough said.

Tell him to get some dice and roll/record his results it should become painfully obvious pretty quickly.

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Shouldn't a lawyer be able to understand simple logic? How else can he create logical arguments for the courtroom?

[MathMagician]

Tell him to come to table Ogden at Cryptos sometime in the next hour.

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

[Reprocess]

His problem stems from his inability to grasp the concept of INDEPENDENT events. In the long run he will look at his PT stats and see that on average he got AA approximatly 1/220 hands or so. His understanding of long term distribution of hands is interfering what he SHOULD know about the independence and "memoryless" nature of the hands. I'm sure MIT has more than sufficient resources for him to clear up this concept(math proffessors, librarays etc). Point him in the right directin and tell him to look into this concept, if he refuses to learn, buddy list him.

[Reprocess]

Also, does he stop playing after he gets AA or KK etc a ridiculusly large number of times since he knows they arent comming, or does he play for hours on end since he hasnt gotten any premium hands this session because he thinks he is "due"? Same concept for winning/losing pots, "hot seats" and "unlucky dealers". His thought process could lead to some very scary results if he carries it to the logical conclusion.

[moondogg]

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Random != Evenly Distributed

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God bless C++, oh how I miss thee.

[Greg J]

Nice one Christina, but I will do you one better. Tell him to become a high-stakes roulette player. I mean they give you those numbers the wheel has hit and everything.

Seriously, I so have trouble anyone being as good at poker as OP says buys into this line of thinking. Maybe his is good at poker, but also has a gambling problem of some sort. I wonder if this guy is a degenerate gambler at other games (craps, BJ, etc.), and buying into this myth is his way of justifying it -- sort of tricking himself (he is obviously intelligent).

[JKDStudent]

Just wanted to add that I'm glad I don't think like your friend. I was playing online last night/this morning and was down. In a span of two hours, I got AA no fewer than five times, KK no fewer than three, AK two or three (won a 30BB pot with that one), and several AQ, AJ, KQs, etc.

Of course now the next time I play, it's going to be all 23o. Darn it.

[YoureToast]

Good post Micro.
Here's my real sense of my friend.
Intellectually, I believe he does not believe what he said. Emotionally and psychologically he does. Not sure if that makes sense, but maybe some more background would help.
He is smart, very very smart. A great lawyer. He is not a mathmatician, but he's no slouch either (you don't ace the LSAT without being good at logic; most logical people are good at math -- and frankly you don't get into Harvard law without being good at math).
His first true endeavor at gambling was counting cards at blackjack fairly successfully.
On a gambling trip (to play BJ mostly)with him, I took along a poker book I owned (having just played recently at Paradise poker) and read some hands to him on the way home. On that trip, our true poker lives and brotherhood began. He began playing online a lot, and became a successful low limit player at Paradise. We talked about poker everyday. He was much better than me for a long time. I may be slightly better now because I have played a lot more mid limit than him in the past 6 months. If I told you his Paradise username, which I won't, I'm sure many of you would know it.

In my view, his number 1 problem is that he cannot emotionally detach from the game. He has a LOT of money, but still hates to lose small amounts. He gets bent out of shape when he gets bad beat. He has quit athe game nd restarted no less than 5 or 6 times since we started (4 years or so ago). I have always told him that he could be such a better player if he could detach emotionally. He can't. He plays for the challenge of it, rather than the money (complete opposite of me, by the way). He compains frequently about why he doesn't seem to get the luck that other players have. Despite my comments to him that the reason he doesn't get bad beat rivers on people like others do on him is because he's usually not around on the river to catch a miracle card, as he shouldn't be. Despite this, he takes it personally when he gets particularly unlucky. I simply cannot understand it.

Nevertheless, in our discussion (from my original post), I believe he got trapped by mixing up 2 things. First, as he and I have discussed on many occasions, he believes (and so do I) that when you play mad, you play bad. (The difference between him and me is that I get mad infrequently, and he does frequently.) One of the reasons I believe he is a long term winning player is because he recognizes this better than most. In other words, when he knows hes gonna play bad because he's not emotionally correct (drunk, tired or angry), he quits -- usually without hesitation. The second thing he mixed in here was a more fundamental disbelief that random is random. Part of him believes streaks exist in a vacuum; part of him believes some people are luckier than others; and part of him believes that its less likely he'll get AA if he's already had it. Intellectually, I don't think he believes any of this; emotionally and psychologically, I think he does to some degree.

Believe me when I tell you he wins; he does and he will continue to win. I think some of your reactions are shortsighted. Ultimately, if he has good opening standards, plays a tight aggressive game, understands pot odds and equity principles, pays attention to his opponents, knows when and when not to slow play, knows when to checkraise to maximize your chances of reducing the field, etc. his irrational belief in the gamblors fallacy probably won't matter much.