It should be pointed out that before the downswing your pair distribution was above average (363.6 versus 345.1) and during the downswing you ran on average (105.2 versus 104.6) for your pair distribution.

Before Downswing....Total hands......Total pairs......Percentage


Actual....................76,254.............4727 (+241).....0.4768%
Expected................76,254.............4486... ............0.4525%

During downswing
Actual...................23,128..............1368 (+8)........0.4543%
Expected...............23,128..............1360... ............0.4523%

An extra 241 hands gives you and extra 5% of total hands that start as PP's.

The question is....was it a downswing or did you start out running hot and came back to your normal level. It will be interesting to see what Part 2 shows. But otherwise a good article that will help people look at all sides of Luck!

Thanks Risgod,

And you're right, before the downswing I ran hot for total number of pairs, which, all things being equal, helped. You've hit on an important nuance to the idea of hand distribution that I didn't explore: Distributions can run lucky for gross numbers of things like pocket pairs or suited connectors vs expected, but also for the relative number of pairs of As and Ks versus 2s and 3s. Obviously I only looked at the latter.

This really underlines the fact that there are a myriad of luck types that operate at the table and can interact in complex ways - she runs deep. The four types of luck I explore are only a fraction of the total luck in play - a point I will touch on in Part II.

I hope your post and Part II of the article will spark some discussion on other important dimensions of luck that should be included in a proper index.

Cheers,
Michael

Well, yeah. A part of a downswing consists in you getting a long streak of unplayable cards. Pocket pairs are, mostly, playable cards. Makes sense what you said

I have a question regarding the bell curve graph,
The graph shows how many flushes, straights and sets you are hitting more/less than the mean, I think we should filter it more to understand how we are running.
Maybe we could filter for connectors and see how we are doing, we could filter for suited hands and se how we are flopping and so on. After we have do this we could see how much we are winning with these made hands, obv we really don't care about hitting a set 100% of the time, but we care how much we are able to win from our opponents, so we could hit a set 100% of the times but win a few bucks, that's bad luck.
What do you think?

ServerB,

The data on the bell curve are for
a) the conversion rate for hitting sets or quads on the flop given that we hold a pair preflop and
b) the conversion rate for hitting straights and flushes given that we are holding a draw AFTER the Flop or Turn

You can watch a helpful video on the feature here: http://www.pokertracker.com/videos/P...uck-bell-curve

If I understand your question, you're writing about how often you are flopping draws given that you held a potential draw before the flop. i.e. you could be holding TsJs all night but never flop a nice flush or straight draw. This would not be reflected in the graphs I posted.

This is another interesting nuance to luck that I didnt look at.... you have to get lucky just to flop a draw and then lucky again to hit the draw. Bad luck at either step can spell trouble.

This allows for an interesting (and frustrating) scenario that could occur wherein you are flopping far fewer draw chances than you should be but converting a high percentage of them. Your conversion would look great, but you might be running negative with draw hands overall, leaving you completely bewildered! Luck never fails to fascinate.

Cheers
Michael

This is very fascinating and the bell curve is really helpful and detailed, going to take this into consideration.

I really appreciate Mr.Humble Nebie for his brief explanation about the ServerB explaining about the Data on a curve and the conversion rate for hitting sets.

"Ladies and Gentlemen,


A simple question. How important in your opinion is 'luck' in poker? Skill versus luck for example 90%-10%, 75%-25%, 50%-50%? How much luck is required to win? Or do you believe skill alone is enough to win and if so, why does the best player not win every tournament? I'd be very interested in your feedback. Thank you."

At the long run its 100%-0%. Short term depends on the format. I would say you need 99% luck to win a donkament with thousands of other players though.

IMO, in say 10,000 tournaments luck fades out as well. Nonetheless, if you hit your 1-outer in a final table of a major tournament, rather than in a $1 tournament, that's the actual luck.

My point is, in the very long run, everybody will have roughly the same number of favorable setups and will give roughly the same amount of bad beats, but since we play the most different stakes to reach say 10k-20k tournaments, it will matter much if you suck out/cooler other players more in key pots in big tournaments, or in the small events.

The answer to this depends partly on the context, for example, short-term or long term. For a cash game player playing more than 10,000 hands per month, it might be possible to never have a losing month.

Dusty "Leatherass" Schmidt claims exactly that in his book, 10K hands a month and zero losing months, with a documented win rate of $800 per hour. Tournaments, as already mentioned, are very different, because one hand could decide whether you make it to a final table with a chance to play for life-changing money.

The "what percentage is luck" question comes up often in the skill-game argument. Many state laws decide how a game should be treated on one criterion--it is a game of skill or a game of chance. This is called the predominance argument, where sometimes a judge will decide whether poker is "mostly skill" or mostly luck. Clearly, under this test, chess is a game of skill and roulette is a game of chance.

Many judges have ruled that under the predominance test, poker is in fact a game of skill.

(I will find a link to a judge's opinion and insert it here.)

For this purpose, many on these forums estimate that poker is about 80% skill and 20% luck (or, in math terms, 20% statistical variance.) Your skill can control or manage a lot of situations, but it can't control a bad run of cards or Phil Ivey being seated at your immediate left during a tournament.

Keep in mind that variance can also be positive. I watched a televised tournament where someone played 64o on two consecutive hands, and he won both hands, making first a straight, then two pair.

---------------------

Court ruling states that poker is a game of skill:

http://theppa.org/ppa/2012/08/21/u-s...cristina-case/

Conclusion
Neither the text of the IGBA nor its legislative history demonstrate that Congress designed the statute to cover all state gambling offenses. Nor does the definition of "gambling" include games, such as poker, which are predominated by skill. The rule of lenity compels a narrow reading of the IGBA, and dismissal of defendant's conviction.

The indictment is dismissed. The jury verdict is set aside.

----------------------

New study suggests poker is a game of skill:

http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news...-game-of-skill

What if 9 equally skilled players sit on a final table?
Then it would be 0% skill 100% luck?

It amazes me that this requires a "study".

Is there a such thing as correct/incorrect decisions in poker? Yes? Then it's a game of skill. QED
There, now hand me my PhD.

What if 2 equally strong grandmasters player each other in a game of Chess. Does that make Chess 0% skill?

At just one final table, anything could happen. Remember the guy who twice had the best hand at showdown with a starting hand of 64o? That was a final table.

All of the players would do close to equally well under three conditions (which could never exist).

1. You had a large enough sample size (many thousands of tournaments) for statistical variance not to be an important factor.

2. The same 9 players would be at the final table every time.

3, The prize pool and prize structure was the same at every tournament.

EDIT: The more that I think about it, the number of conditions that would have to be for equal players to have equal results is infinitely large, for example:

3. No one was tilited because of a recent fight with their bf/gf/husband/wife.
4. Everyone at the final table had the same number of chips.
5. Everyone at the final table got plenty of sleep the night before.

You get the idea. In this case, all things will never be equal.

That seems right.

However, it's unlikely nine players would be equally skilled. There probably are at least some minute differences in skill.

Think of golf. A skilled player might make a birdie on a particular hole one day, a bogie the next day, and par on the third successive day. Is the difference luck?

Buzz

You could certainly say that any outdoor sport has an element of luck due to weather. For example, the player who starts a round of a golf tournament might face very different weather conditions that a the last player to start his round, and a gust of wind can certainly affect the path of a golf ball or a football.

First of all who gives a rats butt what some court ruled?
Second - that "NEW" study is a freaking joke - deduced by 3 brainiacs that probably never played a hand of poker in their lives. Study hands bought from a HH website and "The results provide strong evidence against the hypothesis that poker is a game of pure chance" >>>>> well no crap!!! ANy moron knows poker is NOT a game of pure chance and THE results suggest that skill is an important factor in online poker.LMAO gimme a freakin break!!!
What a waste of 10 minutes of my life - telling me NOTHING, absolutely nothing about poker that any idiot doesn't already know

You may not think that it's important, but in fact, it's very important. As I stated earlier, whether poker is accepted by state law to be a game of skill is very important. In some states, whether or not online poker is even legal can depending on a ruling that poker is a game of skill. Playing online poker is a felony in the state of Washington. I would call that a very big deal.

The big picture is that the Poker Players Alliance and other are fighting for us, both on the national front and state-by-state. When the PPA can get a state judge to agree that poker is a game of skill, that makes it much harder to come up with a legal reason to outlaw online poker.

One more thing, regarding the fight to get members of the US House and Senate to be on our side. Poker is not a legislative priority. A lot of congressmen and senators don't know much about poker, and really don't care. It's just not on their radar.

Those are politicians that can be persuaded to give us their votes. Many probably never even thought about whether poker was a game of skill until the idea was brought to their attention.

That may seem ridiculous to you, and it does to me also. But we live in the real world, where what judges and congressmen and governors decide matters. THAT is why studies and rulings like those that I linked are important.

In such a scenario they probably draw a lot. Imagine these 2 grandmasters have played against each other a thousand times and each wins about 10% when they're white and drawing otherwise. Now one day they play a tournament and are the finalists. Is the winner of this match determined by skill or luck?

Doesn't make chess luck, just showing that the luck/skill debate isn't as clear one way or the other as people make it out to be. Skill is relative and among similar skill levels luck will have a big impact.

(That this debate has anything to do with legalization is a lie. Politics is controlled by special interests, they just make up excuses like this to justify whatever they're doing and distract everyone by giving them some bull**** to talk about.)

I second that, very helpful article.

I can't find the article? A link would be great!

articles only stay up for 6 mos, then they are taken down and rights returned to the authors. You could try contacting the author to see if it's available somewhere else now or if he would send it to you.

Its not just skill OR luck. Both are contributes in play in my eyes.

I see luck as the odds so its always maths