All the years I've been visiting this place I've never seen any kind of discussion on this topic, which is understandable, no one wants to believe they are winning because of luck. Yet, I think we'd all agree that it is a HUGE factor in the game we love. Is there anyway to harness this mysterious force to our advantage? I mean I have no clue how, was just curious. I've given thought to horoscopes..playing looser on good days..tighter on bad..etc. And before someone gets confused, I'm not saying just rely on luck..I'm just wondering if there is any way to predict those "unlucky days" or "lucky days". Just thinking out of box!

Start keeping track of how much you win with each dealer and at each table you play at. After a while it will be easy to identify which dealers and tables are lucky. You have to keep monitoring it though, because things can change. Lucky days are harder. I haven't quite figured those out yet, but I'm still working on it.

If I could harness 'this mysterious force' you'd find me at the craps and BJ tables followed by a trip to the nightclub that the hottest women go to. Why waste it on poker?

I don’t bring my lucky coin because then I can blame my losing session on the lucky coin.

I just remind myself, "I am a lucky player; a powerful winning force surrounds me!"

Luck doesn't actually exist, it's just a matter of our lack of perception/understanding of physics that causes things to appear random. If you could observe/control the movement of each individual card as you shuffle them together, you would know exactly the order of the cards as they sit in the stub.

Same thing with a coin flip. If you could control the physics of the coin down to the individual rotation, you would be able to flip a coin heads/tails anytime you wanted to.

On a more serious note, here's an angle for you guys -- if your cardroom allows you to draw for the button at a new table, sit down after people have started drawing for the button. Usually there are still a couple of seats not yet occupied (people are still in the process of being seated), and you can guess where the button is likely to be based on what cards have been drawn to get a couple of extra free hands.

Doesn't modern physics suggest it's more likely that there is true randomness at the quantum level?

It's probabilistic and not 'controllable' in the sense that most would mean it but once it gets to the macro level things can be controlled. He's just trying to deny 'luck' exists which is pure insanity. Ofc there's such a thing as luck bec that's the only thing that explains why I am the King of Being One Outered.

I'm not sure whether you need Malmuth or Angelo. Probably both. Both have contributed here greatly but it could have been before your time. If you cant have a good losing day you might be struggling with entitlement. Lord knows I still do. Pick up Elements of Poker.

The common mistake people make is thinking that luck is a simple value that is associate just with them. Of course that is false. In a zero sum, non-cooperative game, you success is based on your luck relative to your opponents. It isn't enough to be lucky, your oppoenents have to be unlucky. While most every successful player is well versed in the use of charms and totems, I think the use of curses and hexes is vastly underused in the effort to be the luckiest player at the table.

OP, I suggest you stop focusing on managing your own luck, and instead study with the nearest gypsy, shaman, or witch. It only makes sense.

Luck influences individual hands but skill influences long term success. It's a simple question of statistical variance and volume. If you're someone who plays a hundred hands once a year when you visit Vegas, luck has a massive impact on your potential success. But if you're an online pro who plays one or two million hands a year, luck has a virtually non-existent impact on your success rate. So when you ask if you can 'harness this mysterious force to our advantage', the answer is no- but you can overcome it by simply playing as much as you can.

The reason why the second part of your question can't be true either (that people have 'lucky days' is because that would mean that there are forces in action which are conspiring to give you a lucky day while at the same time acting to give others an unlucky day. Right? People can have days- even many of them- of statistical variance which go in your favor or go against you... as a matter of semantics you could call that luck but I think what I've explained is something slightly different from what you're inquiring about when you talk about horoscopes and all that.

Simple math is all you need to understand the concept we call "luck". There are ~ 8*10^67 unique orders of cards in a shuffled deck. The age of the universe is ~10^15 seconds.

In all seriousness, unless you prescribe to a supernatural model of the universe with extra-physical forces influencing random chance, there is no such thing as 'luck' as a predictive variable. People get confused, because it is very common to say, retrospectively, that someone was lucky when an unlikely, favorable event occurred. But there is no such thing as someone who is 'lucky' from the standpoint that they are more likely to have favorable events than the odds would dictate.

In the Black Swan, Nassim Taleb talks about the narrative bias (the tendency to create an explanation to tie together facts) that when coupled with the confirmation bias (the tendency to look only at facts that support our theory) allow us to form illogical theories. We look at a poker player who has defied the odds over and over again, and we say 'He is lucky, I won't get in hands with him', but we ignore what Taleb refers to as the graveyard, the body of actors who did not fall on the right side of variance and who failed.

So, in summary, there is no such thing as luck. There will inevitably be individuals who appear lucky because they wound up on the right side of variance, because, basically, someone had to. But they are no more likely to win the next coin flip then anyone else. People of subscribe to luck as an explanation of variance, who make poor plays because they 'had a feeling' that their 3 outer was going to hit, who surround themselves with charms and totems, these are typically poor players who are very good for the game.

Great, now we are playing hands against Erwin Schrdinger

Max Born, actually.

All the lucky days from 1950-2000 were listed in this book.


Get yourself a time machine imo, and then you can "predict" the future.

The harder I work the luckier I get.

LOL I had to look up your profile because I was like "lol this must be a gimmick" but you have more than 1 post so ... mind blown I guess.

I have no problem having losing days, just wondering if there is a way to harness luck? To be able to predict those days where we are unlucky ,be aware of it, and adjust our game to it. And vice versa.

Don't online pros and B&M pros have bad years? Don't they have downswings...ad months? Now if, somehow they could have predicted that those months would be bad they could have made adjustments. The whole "long-term" thing lol...how long is long enough? and once you get to long enough are you guaranteed that the percentages will hold up? As for the second part...I don't know? MAYBE there are forces out there..hence, the horoscopes, etc...just maybe...and hence my wondering if it would be worth anything?

No. The many-worlds interpretation is fully deterministic.

This is impossible and completely irrational. "Luck" isn't some metaphysical force that exists out in reality that can be exploited like The Force in Star Wars lol. It's simply a concept that exists to describe an alleged attribute of those who gain a material benefit against huge odds.

Set up a computer program to generate a random number, 1 or 0. Run that program for a significant portion of time. While the distribution will be 50-50, there will be times when you get 20 1's in a row. This is just variance.

Yes, players can run badly for weeks or months. But that isn't because some arcane metaphysical force called 'luck' was against them, it was just the result of random variance.

If you believe in things like horoscopes or other superphysical, quasi mystical forces which you believe control random chance, you should probably just stop posting here, as it is a ridiculous belief, and you will be mocked mercilessly(and justifiably).

Luck is a quality that can be used to describe uneven variance retropectively. it is not a quality that has any kinds of predictive value.

The most important thing to take away from this is that, just because you have been getting lucky in the recent past, there is no reason to believe that luck will continue (or vice versa). So even if you knew a way to "adjust" to being unlucky, it would be impossible to know when exactly to apply it.

Now, absent in this discussion about the non-existence of luck is the very real impact of altered play due to extended run good or run bad. Players that have been experiencing positive variance ('Good' luck) tend to play more aggressively, attack more often with draws, raise more than call, etc. Players who have been beaten into submission with 'bad' luck will play less aggressively, will have less stomach for bluffing and semi-bluffing, and will ultimately be playing to minimize losses, which almost guarantees a losing session.

So, while I strongly deny the existence of luck as a predictive quality, I am very aware of cumulative effect of how I have been running might be effecting my game. To people who are flying high on a good run, or mired in the misery of a bad run, they may not notice the changes in their game, and then will attribute their continued success or failure to non-existant luck.