LUCK...

Does a real thing called LUCK exist?

[TexArcher]

"Luck", good or bad, to me, is a short-term break from the law of averages.

Everyone has these short-term runs and if everyone plays an infinite number of hands the law of averages will play the same for everyone.

It certainly has nothing to do with the shirt you're wearing, doing the same pre-game ritual before sitting at the table, etc, etc.

[luckycharms]

What a ridiculous post... I can't believe so many people believe in luck.

I've lost AA preflop a million times in a row, but I still don't believe in luck. Like the concept of God, it's an entity created to help cope with contingency and misfortune. There is no scientific basis for it, therefore I have no reason to believe in it. Online poker is rigged! Just kidding, tardos.

[MrPowers]

Always after my "Lucky Charms!" [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Says the rabbit with no foot [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

"In my experience there's no such thing"

-Obi Wan

Of course luck exists, how is it even possible for it not to?

Are you not lucky if you have QQ and another player has KK and the flop is QQK? Or if the player on the button decides to bluff all-in with 72 offsuit while you're in the big blind with AA, is that not lucky?

[paperchamp]

Is it not possible for someone to "run better" over the course of a lifetime? Obviously variance will happen and everyone will run even over an infinite period of time but since people do not have an infinite amount of time, couldn't you define the fluctations from person to person in a lifetime as luck however miniscule the difference might be?

There's also a big difference between "getting lucky" and luck, perhaps better phrased as "being lucky", which I think a lot of people fail to neglect.

The difference is obvious and simple to me, but for those who don't understand my comment, "getting lucky" happens all the time. Somebody sucks out on aces with 27o, or a small pp flops a set against KK, and the kings call to the river where they spike trips. That is called getting lucky, and it represents a single event where the outcome of the hand defy the odds. Everyone gets lucky at some point in their life, but if chance was beatable, there would be no point in discussing pot odds, pot equity, EV, variance, or any other mathematical application to poker (much less any point playing the game).

"Being lucky" means beating the odds consistently, aka winning when you should lose a highly disproportionate percent of the time, over a large (statistically significant) sample size. This just doesn't happen.

One of my college buddies said to me the other day, "I'm never playing a hand with (Bob) again, hes so lucky. He calls my AKs with 23o and always then the flop comes A23."

I looked at him and simply said "NO. NEVER SAY THAT AGAIN. YOU'RE AN IDIOT." As many times as my friend and I have joked with each other about taking this guy's money, he goes and b****es about luck.

It's a figment of your imaginations. The cards can't conspire against you, theyre pieces of paper/plastic.

[luckycharms]

[ QUOTE ]
Of course luck exists, how is it even possible for it not to?

Are you not lucky if you have QQ and another player has KK and the flop is QQK? Or if the player on the button decides to bluff all-in with 72 offsuit while you're in the big blind with AA, is that not lucky?

[/ QUOTE ]


*sigh*

Ok, you formulate the definition of "luck" as: An unlikely event resulting in a higher-than-average value or profit for any given hand or session

I, on the other hand, formulate "short-term variance" as: An unlikely event resulting in a higher-than-average value or profit for any given hand or session

(drumroll, as this may be the best post ever by anyone ever ever)

If you want to talk about long-term "luck" or "variance" - as the two are synonomous - you're talking about a different story. It doesn't exist, and I'll prove it. You define the concept of long-term luck as: Short term luck (aka variance) repeated enough to produce a profit or loss dramatically different from what one might expect.

Go to any poker calculator and enter a random matchup... if you calculate it a few times, you might notice the numbers are slightly different, for example the hand that's a 68.35% favorite one time might be a 68.34% favorite the next calculation. Despite that short-term variance shown in the decimal place, that number will NEVER have enough repeated short term variance for it to equal 75%... or even 69%... no matter how many times you calculate that, since the calculations are simulated with hundreds of thousands of generated board combinations, the short term luck will never be able to overcome the brute of raw statistics.

On a side note, if there was an entity such as luck, what would be the thing that controlled the delegation of this luck? God? Karma? Would luck be a zero sum game, as in if someone is 85% luckier than the average, there must be someone out there who is 85% unluckier than avg? Since most people think they're unlucky, and luck was controlled by God or karma, wouldn't that mean that either God was malevolent, or most poker-players have bad karma (the latter, now that I think about it, not all unlikely.)

Currently, Barry Tanenbaum is doing a bunch of articles on something called Prospect Theory, it offers some great insights as to why some players feel unlucky. It's on cardplayer.com.... good stuff, check it out.

[vexvelour]

you should add a "neither/nor" option