Fallacious terms - "Regression to mean"

[spike]

A term I see used a lot in the poker forums. But I'm sure it's being misused here.

It appears to be used in these forums by people who believe that if you have a good (or bad) run of cards that temporarily change your win rate, then you will in due course, experience a contrary run of cards that will make you regress to your mean win rate.

It's almost as if the people who use this term believe that a player has a fixed mean win rate and that the gods of poker notice when they deviate too far from their assigned mean and force them to "regress" to it.

I notice though that they only ever use this term to describe people on a winning rush who should then regress down to their mean. Players who have a bad run never seem to be able to use the same concept to get back up again.

Spike