I am apprentice cash game player and during my last bad run i was thinking about bad runs and good runs and the way they affect your play.

I came up with a (new) concept that i called "Meta luck". In opposition with instant luck (the fact to take a bad beat on a given hand for example), the "meta luck" refers the order and frequency of the good runs and bad runs you suffer. We all know that at the end anyone is as lucky as the others, but "meta luck" is what really maters because its the factor that will let you see or not the long-term effect of your play.

I will give you several examples where the meta luck is the dagger :

1 - You just moved up limit and for the first thousand of hands you play at the new limit you run very poorly.

=> You are not "meta lucky" you could have start with a good run and defenitly move up the ladder. You can as well doubt your hability to play this limit even if this is not the case.

2 - Your bad runs are very regroupped on a given periode of time.

=> You are not "meta lucky", you can be more subject to tilt (and loose even more), you can make modification on your play that are not necessary because of the false impression of playing bad. Maybe for the next 3000 hands you will run like a god but its too late you are alreday down 20 buy ins and depressed. Even the most tilt-proof minds can be affected by very bad "meta luck"

3 - The bad runs and good runs you are experiencing are well alternated.

=> You are "meta lucky" the bad run you just had is canceled by the next good run and you are abble to see the effects of your plays. You are less subject to tilt cause you are having less swing in your bankrool. You can move up the ladder smoothly.

So next time you sit at a table dont wish to be luck, instead wish to be "meta lucky" !

W1cked.

Provided what you say makes sense, what use is the term?

^this

I sorta don't understand this.

Also, from what little I do understand, it doesn't seem to differ from the concept "everything evens out in the end" mindset.

unless i'm missing something.

I guess i did not finish my post properly. The next question is how do i protect myself from the negative effect of meta luck.

I think anderstanding and accepting the existance of meta luck is one huge step. Beeing aware of no matter how good you play over a long period of time sometimes it is not enought.

When experiencing bad meta luck it make the poker mindset princinples even more important :
- playing for the long term (even more the very long term)
- focusing on making good descisions and not making money (even if its your 10th negative session in a row)

You right when you say that it's close to "the everything evens out at the end" but my point is to be aware that the "END" can be very far away and the path to get there can be very rocky depending on your meta luck.

The meta luck can also have the oposite effect : going pro to early even if you are no good enough, or moving limit too soon due to good meta luck and getting crushed.

Isn't this just another term for variance?

Variance is one thing and meta luck is another. Meta luck is the way you are suffering the variance timing wise.

For example you take 2 players A and B with the same skills and the same tilt resistance.

Player A is running like this :

++--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--++

Player B is running like this :

----+----+----+--+--++++++++++++++

"+" = running good
"-" = running bad

Both player had the same variance (ie "+" and "-" are equals in numbers) but who do you think will make bigger money at the end ? I am guessing player A.

It's gonna be really hard for player B to play his A-game with this huge swings. And he is gonna be very vunerable to tilt and potentially loose more. By the time he reach his good run maybe he would have been forced to move down limit and not profit from it as he should.

I don't think you understand what variance is.

Basically he's saying when you suffer your negative variance in a string as opposed to spread out is what he coins meta luck. He's talking about the psychological effect it has on you.

Yeah this doesn't sound crazy to me or anything. Someone who gets all his bad luck at once might feel worse about it than someone who gets it in small doses, even though they suffer about the same misfortune. How you feel about how lucky you are can affect how you play, sure.

I just don't see how knowing or using this term... affects or helps or anything like that. It's like defining what a "fish" is, how is having a concrete definition of this word going to make any difference.

Exact, thanks seven, in you example this is "bad meta luck".

Makes sense to me. Being lucky or unlucky at certain times can be misleading or disheartening. So yes its a concept already accounted for by those with a good understanding of variance but no its not going to do any harm to be aware that the timing of luck is important and perhaps give that specific concept a name.

Would this be an example of bad metaluck?: a friend who just started playing recently insisted on trying a very very bad lag strategy he came up himself with despite my advice. He proceeded to stack a few people with fluke cards and mistook this for evidence that his strategy was profitable. If he had understood variance he would not have jumped to this incorrect conclusion and then continued to play it even when it was losing money, post-rationalising his losses as accidental deviation from his 'winning' strategy. So being extremely lucky at first was bad metaluck?

I suppose the very act of coining something can give more realism to it, thus it's on your mind more often. This could then lead to setting up counter strategies to dealing with the problem.

Often if we don't remind ourselves about certain things it's very easy to overlook them. Like in poker for example there have been times I've found myself playing really laggy, a ton of hands oop and i wind up in these awful spots when the spot could have been avoided by simple fundamentals.

Being aware of something is the first step in the process of finding counter mesure to it.

Understand and accept it, is the seconde one.

Any dedicated player would know that running like B will only force to you to become a better player. So the situation should only effect losing players in the long run because they don't understand the insanity of variance

-------------+++--------------+--------------prepare for suicide++++++++++++++++++++

Joe Cada had great meta-luck because he ran good when the stakes were at the absolute highest. No matter how he runs the rest of his life, he will always have had a massive meta-variance run good for his life.

Meta Luck applies mostly at beginning of a career...
And is VERY important and can be a deciding factor...
It can make or break a Zero Sum Game career.

I've made about 1,200,000 trades in 15 years...
And my career NET earnings are $4-5 million...

BUT...

In my first 3 years 1994-96...
I executed about 15,000 trades (1% of lifetime)...
And was relatively inexperienced, but I RAN HOT...
Leaning long into an easy, rising bond market...
And did not experience any difficult markets...
Until the Russia Crisis in 1998 and Y2K in 1999.

So I now have a great 15 year track record...
But Meta Luck got my hedge fund off the ground...
If I started trading today... it would be a LOT harder.

Not much you can do about Meta Luck...
Except plan to be in it for the Long Haul.

It's a HUGE factor in building a poker bankroll...
Or becoming a TV Poker Star...
Any random Pro who went on a heater in 2004...
Became a "TV poker celebrity"...
Even if, today, they sleep in a bus shelter.

Good example and what about the redneck moron that finished 2nd !!

admitting meta luck exists is just finding patterns where there aren't any. That's like looking at you bb/100 graph going up and seeing your $/100 graph going down and then trying to deduce whether you were lucky or unlucky.

I am not looking for patterns, i am talking about timing.

If every time you try to move up limit you are experiencing negative variance then you are forced to move back and you dont know if you are not good enought for the new limit or not.

A guy with bad meta luck is gona maybe try several time to move up limit before succeding.

A guy with good meta luck will succeed the first time and be more confidente with his game whenever he has the skills or not for the new limit.

Forget metaluck...bs, why is that the bigger stack in MTT play seems to pull it off?

The bigger the stack, the tighter the range the more hands we see,

I thought metagame was about lines and ranges and wtf does villian have, how can I bluff him with nothing cause the flop missed his range?

I must be wrong

I have coined a term for when you get really good finds searching your backyard with a metal detector: I call it metal-luck. Being metal-lucky can give you the confidence you need to spend many years of your life looking for treasure.

Meta luck seems to me as exactly the same as luck but in specific and quite arbitrary situations. Whoever said this is just running good and running bad is completely correct, and we shouldn't try to overcomplicate things by inventing new terms which aren't necessary and might not be understand by most people.

The other day we were at a steakhouse and everyone got food poisoning except me, I guess I got very meat-lucky.

Despite getting meat-lucky myself the other day, I still think that this is a good concept to be aware of.

For me there is instant luck and meta-luck as there is the game (the strategy for a given hand) and the meta-game (the overall strategy).

Meta luck is the way luck spread out during your poker life, its one level of abstraction above luck as meta game is one level of abstraction above the game.

The différence is that meta-luck should not affect your play as meta game does. You just need to be aware of it and stay objectiv about the quality of your play dispite the fact of being meta-lucky or not.

Ps: Metal-lucky ....lmao, ur funny dude.

Long term however this shouldnt make a difference. If you move up a limit and run bad, you should know yourself that you are running bad. This wont matter if you are suitably rolled. Even if you have to drop down, long term it makes little difference as you can just move right back up when you have enough money to take another stab. I agree that the difference is the effect it has on ones confidence but you should know yourself that you are kidding yourself on a bit when you think you are great because you happen to running super good.

I think your timing idea is far more suited towards particular instances where you really want to be lucky. As someone mentioned above, one crazy lucky run at the wsop main event may be followed by 50 years of bad luck, but that is still lucky. Someone who got very unlucky at the wsop but lucky for 50 years will likely never come close to making the same amount of money. It is human nature however to overlook this varience long term - how many times have you heard the same player shout "one time", over and over again!