hi newbies,

thought I write down some thoughts of mine after beeing a mtt/sng pro for two years and playing some cash too:

if youre unlucky, you will lose 1 000 000 or even more times in a row with the better hand at showdown, when there are stilll cards to come. or run into the top of the villains range that often, going all in on the river.
in a random number for example, there sometimes comes 0 a million times or even a billion times in a row. so if ure thinking of going pro, dont do it without savings to cover your living costs

greetings

This is not news.

what u doin in the newbie section with ur 17k posts except for hatin?

Telling you facts?

in case it wasnt clear: you can work on your game as hard as u want, if ure unlucky, ull lose anyway

True in the short term, false in the long term. But sometimes the long term is a very, very long time in coming.

Nobody is "lucky" or "unlucky" by nature. "Luck" is not a real thing.

Each individual poker hand has a "luck" factor based on the random order of the cards in the deck. Variance is the statistical representation of that random factor in poker. In the long run, the variance factor should approach 0, but the long run is a very long time, just as the random order of cards in a deck is a very large number.

Don't focus on the random order of cards in the deck. You can't control that. What you can control are the decisions you make.

You win at poker over the long run by making good decisions based on your understanding of opponents' tendencies and the math of the game. You minimize your emotional reaction to variance by by being properly rolled for the stakes you play.

Now I understand why I'm homeless. Damn it, why didn't you post in here back in 2008?

I would say luck is real. But it's not an inherent quality of a person, it's a description of past events.

This is what people who are not particularly skilled v their opponents always say.

You responding to OP or me/Didace?

If the latter, please explain. You're one of the most respected contributors here, and I need to learn from the error of my ways.

this is just some facts

I am reffing billion dollar guy.

People who are not highly skilled v their opponents are ALWAYS looking for reasons why they dont win what they think the should.

its rigged
I am soooo unlucky
they always get there
blah blah blah

I have heard this from a huge number of wannabees over the years.

I guess me and all my perfessional buds who have never had losing years are just insanely lucky.

good guessing game

Says the professional.

"I am soooo unlucky
they always get there"

Let's be honest. There are sometimes runouts where you simply could have never told that he has this specific hand, even with villain reads. Some pros experience this string of unluckiness for a very long time even if they made money the past many years.

I have been a pro for about 9 years, played only public casino games up to 50/100nl, battled plenty of other tough regs, never had a losing year and live a very comfortable life from poker also with income from investments made possible from poker.

I will say this about skill vs luck:

It is very difficult for a good pro without life leaks or excessive shot-taking to have losing years.

HOWEVER variance makes the difference of whether someone is the "winningest" reg and go on to play nosebleeds/retire from investments, or a reg with just mediocre winrates that's good enough to live comfortably and set their own hours.

Take some regs from the same 5/T cash game pool firing tournies. A few of them will bink a couple of 6-7 figure tourney scores while most of them will struggle to break even or min cash. The former regs is just not 100x better than the non-binking regs. They probably aren't even 3x better, they might even be worse.

When you play bigger games that don't run too often, yeah running bad in a few key pots really wrecks your year. I have long streaks of winning sessions and running bad in only 3 sessions turned a 6 fig year into a mid 5 fig one.

So yeah, while you will always make money as a skilled player, variance plays a pretty big role as to how much you win.

Agree. A luckgame with a skill factor.

I was a pro and now semi pro. I have never had a losing year. I will say this, however: one thing that will likely reduce any pro’s win rate is poor card distribution. If you run well below average in being dealt good hands, you are at a disadvantage. Conversely, if you get more than your fair share of good hands, you will probably win more.

Over infinite hands this will even out, but we don’t have infinity, especially live grinders who get way fewer hands per hour than the online folks.

^^ this is a good point. Having months of live play (not necessarily 40/hrs a week) of constantly winning and loosing the minimum with premiums, not coolering someone often enough, not getting involved in big pots often etc, meanwhile your neighbor's are coolering people every other session while you're just slowly bleeding twiddling your thumbs all night. A major part of run bad is simply card distribution and shorter sessions if you're smart enough to get up and leave when game dynamics and table selection opportunities dictate so.

Will it?

if youre unlucky, you will lose 1 000 000 or even more times in a row with the better hand at showdown, when there are stilll cards to come.


I must be a little ornery today .. but how are 'we' even responding to a post that includes '1M times in a row'

Perhaps it was meant 'better starting hand' .. that loses at Showdown after all the chips go in before the River comes out .. ??? GL

We'll have to wait and see....

I'll bite some more .. damn it.

In order for things to 'even out' you would have to play pots of exactly the same size (or at least average) over the period of time.

There are plenty of sessions where I'll see a Player have a huge winning percentage of their VPiP hands and yet leave a huge loser due to the size of the pot 'when' they lose one.

You might be in the exact same spot, but against a Nit v Aggro and your 'return' on a +EV decision wont be math based, it'll be Player based. But then again as long as you are +EV you could run into an infinite number of times v Nit AND v Aggro.

Yes, it will take a long time to see this evolve and they will probably evolve as much different paces since there are probably more Agrro Players out there. GL

No need to wait, we have math.