(I was going to post this if FGators' thread because while I don't know him, he has come to represent, to me at least, the definition of running bad. But I don't know FGators personally, and he seems nice enough to me, so why bother hijacking his bonfire of the poker vanities thread?)

Cliffnotes – if you are running bad, then some one else is running good, and you need to kill this person who runs good in order to stop running bad

The Schrödinger Cat thought experiment has got me thinking about running bad in poker. If you are not familiar with the thought experiment, read about it here Schrödinger's cat. I recommend you read it because I suck at explaining it...

The gist of it is there is a gun controlled by a quantum particle that is likely to go off as it is not, and this gun is placed in a box with a cat. So the cat is either dead or alive in the box, but you won't know until you open it. Once you open the box, the cat is either dead or alive for certain, but before you open it, the cat exists in blurred state of being both dead and alive.

Some postulate that while the cat exists in both states prior to opening the box, but once you do, the wave function collapses and you have a dead cat or an alive cat.

Others submit that there are two universes, one where the cat is dead in the box and the other where the cat is alive. Before you open the box, you exist in both universes, but once you open the box the universes diverge. In one you feel guilty about killing your cat (unless you’re that cat murdering bastard Bill Frist) and in the other you feel relieved that science has not taken your beloved pet away from you.

Now this brings us to poker, because you will either hit your draw or you won't. Your opponent will either such out or he won't. Prior to the river, you exist in both universes, but once the river comes and the result is known, your universes have diverged. In one universe you are happy, in the other you’re busto.

For starters, one can take consolation in the fact that while he is sad; another version of him exists in another universe that is extremely happy. But that's not a very good consolation, because you still have to pay your bills in this universe, and in fact, you will soon start to find yourself being jealous of your other self who is balling around in another universe where BrandiRose can fly.

Back to the point, which is that we can use Schrödinger’s Cat to prove that there really are players who cannot win, even though they play correctly.

Start with one person, and then we have the AK hitting or the 44 holding. Now we have two of you, and low and behold you both take another flip. The you who won with AK flips, and you win or lose. The you who lost with AK flips, and you win and lose. Now we have four of you, as follows:

Version A – Won with AK first time, won the second;

Version B – Won with AK the first time, lost the second;

Version C – Lost with AK the first time, won the second; and

Version D – Lost with AK the first time, lost the second.

You can go on. In the next round, you will have 8 versions of you, of which one will have won all three flips and one other who lost all three. The next level, you will have 16 versions, but again, there will only be one version who won four in a row and one who lost four in a row. Then 32, 64, 128, 256, 512 total versions of you, but in each case there will only be one player who lost all of his flips, and only one player who won all of his flips.

Stepping aside from the extremes, there are definitely in betweens, there are versions of you who must have lost 80% of their flips. That doesn’t seem fair, but if we buy into the multiple universe explanation of Schrödinger Cat, then such versions of you are a certainty. Of the millions of versions of you that exist, the number of you who lose 80% of the flips is an extremely tiny percentage, but they are there. So maybe people like FGators suck at poker, or maybe they are just the unlucky versions of themselves traveling down the roads of diverging universes and just happen to reside in the present universe that you also happen to populate at the moment. It’s for you to decide.

But, let’s say you are running badly, and you have decided that it’s not due to poor play but you in fact are one of the unlucky versions of yourself that Schrödinger’s Cat tells us must exist. What can you do about it? Anything?

I propose that there is a way. For example, the unlucky version of FGators exists in our universe today, and if he loses on Saturday and we hear about it, then this unlucky version of him has traveled down the same path of diverging universes that you traveled yourself. Why is it that this unlucky version of FGators remains in your universe? Why have your paths not diverged?

The answer is that unlucky version of FGators is connected to some other player in this universe who runs better than he should. Quantum experimentation tells us this must be the case. When quantum physicists reversed the polarity of one particle and caused it to spin in another direction, they discovered that a seemingly disconnected particle’s spin was also reversed—a particle that the scientists did not act on at all! Our unlucky poker player is the one particle who is countered by another particle that is extremely lucky. If the unlucky player wants to reverse his fortunes he can read his Sklansky some more—or more effectively, he can reverse the fortunes of his lucky counterpart.

So when you are running bad (and you know you’re not playing bad), some person out there is running way better at life than he should and that the two of you are traveling down the same path of diverging universes. You need to cause this lucky person a to have a very unlucky day, and what could be more unlucky that getting hit by a bus, having a brick fall on your head from above, etc., etc., etc.

I hope this helps you all in your future endeavors. Thanks for reading.

Cliffnotes:

So when you are running bad (and you know you’re not playing bad), some person out there is running way better at life than he should and that the two of you are traveling down the same path of diverging universes. You need to cause this lucky person a to have a very unlucky day, and what could be more unlucky that getting hit by a bus, having a brick fall on your head from above, etc., etc., etc.

Pic of Schroedinger cat plz.

Post deleted by Gildwulf

First of all isn't this all untrue if the wave functions do collapse? Secondly, it's been a while since I took Quantum Mechanics and I didn't pay much attention when I did, but isn't their a more complete mathematical framework for the wave functions collapsing, rather than of us living in the multiverse?

I liked your post alot though. I consider the nature of parallel universes from time to time but I have never applied it to poker.

just crazy enough to work



now where's Jamie Gold?

I was hoping this had something to do with Threadcat, but even though it didn't, that was a fairly awesome post.

(not my pic)

Lori

Hilarious! Nice post by Lori as well.

Jesus Christ this thread needs all the love BBV can give.

i wonder how many people just opened this and immediately hit back after seeing how long it was. i thought it was pretty interesting, i've actually read quite a bit about the Schrodinger's Cat experiment. never thought about applying it like this, though. makes sense

Schrödinger's flips. I like it.

The snozberries taste like snozberries.

Wait, so does this picture refer to Schrodinger's Cat?



The first time I saw this I didn't get it, but now I'm lolling. Awesome.

So would a good strat would be to attempt to spew bad karma everywhere I go?

i liked the part about killing FGators. Quality post.

I had a theory about this once.

OK, now imagine that instead of you being outside the box with the cat, you are the cat. Or rather you are inside a box, with a random particle determining whether you live or die.

Now there's still going to be two universes, one where you live, and one where you don't, but of course, you won't know about the one where you die, so you'll only know about the one where you live.

Therefore, you could carry out this experiment 100 times, and each time, you would survive, or one of you would survive, and that the only one who would know about it.

So to everyone else, you wind up dead, in your own universe, you are alive and have just survived 100 random 50 50 events...


Now if we extend this to live, and assume that the majority of things which could kill us are in some way determined by a random event. So life is like one big shrodingers experiment, and your own self will always survive the random events, because you wont know about the ones that don't... so everyone, in their own universe will survive until there is no possible universe in which they don't die... so everyone really has like 120 years ahead of them...

The coinflipping example is used by Warren Buffett in the Preface to the Intelligent Investor to show how that if everyone in America flipped coins everyday after a few years there would be people who won all the time and would be sharing their superior coin flipping strategies, etc. But then he explains how that by analyzing the thought process that goes into doing whatever that leads to results is the more telltale sign of reliability of the results. So I guess that would mean looking at how someone who runs bad plays, as opposed to merely looking at all in EV graphs or sample sizes.

Nit objection, but wasn't it originally supposed to be a jar of prussic acid in the box rather than a gun?

Nice post though.

Here's the concluding chapter from my recently finished poker strategy book:

'...if you still aren't winning then you haven't killed enough people yet.'

or maybe
"If you are runnign hot, be aware and look at your back because FGators can be somewere around you with a gun triying to kill you"