Interesting take on poker pros
 

First let me say I beleive there is a lot of skill in poker. But there is also a lot of luck too. And trust me I know that in the long run skill will win.

Okay quick statistics lesson. In most processes, random variation conforms to a probability distribution know as the normal distribution, which is the most commonly observed probability distribution. It is also known as a bell curve or Guassian distribution. The empirical rule is a handy quick estimate given the mean and standard deviation of a data set that follows the normal distribution. The empircal rule states that for a normal data set 99.7% of all data will fall within 3 standard deviations of the mean.

Okay it doesn't matter if you understood a word of that or not. But apply it to the "luck" in holdem poker. What it says is most people over the course of their life are going to experience close to the same amount of luck when it comes to winning and losing. But there are a few who are going to be more unlucky (more bad beats) than normal and a few who are going to be more lucky (more suck outs) than normal.

Take Phil Ivy, he has the poker skills but I also bet you he falls outside the 99.7% on the lucky side. And I bet most of your best poker pros do as well.

So what I am saying is your best poker players not only have the skill but also have more than their fair share of luck.

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

Way to rationalize your failure at poker. "They are pros cause they are lucky!" Yeah, that's it.

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How much is Ivey down online for the year?

Matusow's a luckbox too.

You're just unlucky.

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

not interesting just not true!!!!

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

CraigJ... have you really been on this forum for nearly three years and yet still harbour the belief that good poker pros are just really, REALLY lucky?... oh dear, just where did all your time go?

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

let's say that you rate Ivey's luck at "42" (or some other number)

Exactly what are you going to do with this information? Why does it matter whether you decree that Phil Ivey is lucky or unlucky?

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I guess Jamie Gold must be a really, really great player, then. I mean given that one poker player can't be luckier than another...

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This is a commonly accepted theory for all professional athletes. The best pros are certainly better than average, but they are most likely not as good (long term) as their short-term results.

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Learn to read people!!

I never said there wasn't any skill in poker. Trust me I know there is. (I like to think I fall in the skilled area.) But there is also luck in Poker. And based on the probablity distribution there have to be people who are going to get more than their fair share of good luck at the poker table.

I was saying imagine the Poker Player who is incredibly skilled and also has more than his fair share of good luck. He has the best of BOTH worlds. Now if that person exists where would you find that someone? Probably dominating the Poker world. Sounds like Phil Ivy to me. Again he has the best of BOTH worlds, VERY SKILLED, VERY LUCKY.

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

Learn to read people!!

I never said there wasn't any skill in poker. Trust me I know there is. (I like to think I fall in the skilled area.) But there is also luck in Poker. And based on the probablity distribution there have to be people who are going to get more than their fair share of good luck at the poker table.

I was saying imagine the Poker Player who is incredibly skilled and also has more than his fair share of good luck. He has the best of BOTH worlds. Now if that person exists where would you find that someone? Probably dominating the Poker world. Sounds like Phil Ivy to me. Again he has the best of BOTH worlds, VERY SKILLED, VERY LUCKY.

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

I was just stating an observation. Kind of like the sky is blue. Doesn't really mean a thing to me. But I bet it does to the really lucky or even the really unlucky person. And no not that the sky is blue, the poker observation. I have found you have to be very clear on whay you say when you post here.

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

Who you really have to feel sorry for is the really skilled poker player whose luck falls on the bad end. He could be living the life of Phil Ivy. He has the skill but unfortunately because he is one of the few who has an unproportionate amount of bad luck he hasn't gotten the same rewards.

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

STOP BUMPIMG NO ONE CARES, KTHX.

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

For someone who doesn't care. You seem to be reading and posting to this string a lot.

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

i undersatnd exactly what you are saying, and i believe doyal brunson fits that discription, come on what are the chances that you win 2 wsop back to back and with the same hand??? you make an excellent point and your theory is correct

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Exactly! And I am not taking anything away from Doyle. He literally wrote the book on Poker. He is a poker genius. But the luck took him from a poker genius to a poker legend. He has the best of both worlds, the skill and the luck.

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wow you guys have absolutely no understanding of statistics and probability. The reason we only count the long term and tell people with a 10k hand sample its not valid is because short term results wont even out and there will be a large luck factor.

Poker tourneys are short term results. Yes someone can get insanely lucky in a short term tourney and yes in that case the donkament "pros" are signifigantly lucky, but when it comes to pure poker over the long run there wont be people falling outside the distribution just because they are lucky.

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

Did you see the following thread?
Poker Theory: Poker Gods...

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

Wrong. There is always data that falls outside the normal distribution. It is rare usually about .3% but it is always there. So if you could take every poker player in the world and view every hand they played their entire life. You are going to find a few rare people who got "lucky" more often. They sucked out more. Their bad hands held up more. They got drawn out on less. However you want to define the "luck". Even though the "luck" is really only probabilities. And they have gotten the best of it. Or worst of it on the other end.

Again just saying if you have a really skilled poker player and they are the "lucky" one who fell into the .3% category, they are going to dominate at poker, again because of SKILL and LUCK (luck being probabilites going their way).

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

as i said, maybe lucky in the short term, the bigger the sample size the more perfectly the results will fit into it(flip a coin a billion times and i bet it comes out to 50% not some people do it and get 53 while others get 47) they might get lucky in a tournament but over the course of their career they have the same luck, just maybe they had their good run at a WSOP main event while someone else had it in a cash game.

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Are you saying pro athletes beleive they are where they are becasue they are luckier than their peers? I think a minority of pro's that have not acheived success, might attribute it to bad luck but, the overriding sentiment is that the best players will succeed over time.

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

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Okay quick statistics lesson. In most processes, random variation conforms to a probability distribution know as the normal distribution, which is the most commonly observed probability distribution. It is also known as a bell curve or Guassian distribution. The empirical rule is a handy quick estimate given the mean and standard deviation of a data set that follows the normal distribution. The empircal rule states that for a normal data set 99.7% of all data will fall within 3 standard deviations of the mean.


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WOW! You are Awesome!

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

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Are you saying pro athletes beleive they are where they are becasue they are luckier than their peers? I think a minority of pro's that have not acheived success, might attribute it to bad luck but, the overriding sentiment is that the best players will succeed over time.

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i cant agree with this, you have to walk a very fine line to make it pro in a sport regardless of skill.

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

I never said anything about pro athletes such as basketball, baseball, etc... They don't have nearly the same luck factor that is in poker. On any ONE given game/round a newbie to golf could probably never beat Tiger woods, but a newbie to Poker could beat Phil Ivy.

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You're coming close but you're not quite there. Not everybody is going to hit the average EXACTLY. Let's use your coin flip as an example. If everyone were to flip a coin a billion times it isn't going to come up heads EXACTLY half a billion times and tails EXACTLY half a billion times for every single person. IT IS THE GROUP THAT MAKES THE AVERAGE. Some are going to get more heads and some are going to get more tails. Now for most people it is going to be so close that it won't really matter. But there is going to be deviation on both sides. And if you have a large enough sample size you will see some who really deviated from the norm. You will seem some who got a lot more heads or tails than would seem normal.

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

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You're coming close but you're not quite there. Not everybody is going to hit the average EXACTLY. Let's use your coin flip as an example. If everyone were to flip a coin a billion times it isn't going to come up heads EXACTLY half a billion times and tails EXACTLY half a billion times for every single person. IT IS THE GROUP THAT MAKES THE AVERAGE. Some are going to get more heads and some are going to get more tails. Now for most people it is going to be so close that it won't really matter. But there is going to be deviation on both sides. And if you have a large enough sample size you will see some who really deviated from the norm. You will seem some who got a lot more heads or tails than would seem normal.

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i disagree, you are talking like some people are just destined to have the coin flip 53% heads for them no matter what, the fact of the matter is the larger the sample size gets it will make the number converge on 50%......the larger the sample the closer and closer the numbers will fall to the true probability, they may not come out to EXACTLY 50/50 always but the error will be in the thousandths of a percent nothing enough to say ya he is just lucky and his flush draws have hit 45% of the time in all 2 million hands he played online.

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

Exactly the larger the sample size the the closer it is going to come to 50/50. But you are still going to have deviations on both sides. One person flips 20% heads another person flips 80% heads, they average out to 50%. Again a large deviation like 80% or 20% is RARE, but if you have a large enough sample you WILL find it. But it doesn't really affect the over all results of the final average because 1) it is rare and 2) as I mentioned above you will find a deviation on the other end which in a sense balances it out.

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And before people post. To find some one flipping a billion times and coming up 80% or 20% may take a larger sample size than we have people on earth. I'm not sure. But again with Poker the percentages don't have be as drastic as 80/20 to dominate.

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

I hear what you're saying Craig, but it isn't correct when referring to poker. A lot of poker is getting players to call with the worst hand and knowing how to maximize your winnings with the best hand. For example, let's say that you have top set, and your opponent has top pair, and all the money goes in. It doesn't matter how lucky or unlucky you are, you're going to win the hand. The pros are experts at figuring out weakness and what the other player has, they can almost "see" what their opponents have. They put their money in with the best hand and fold with the worst hand. So with this in mind, luck really doesn't matter too much in regarding how good a poker player is.

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

i agree with this based on the charts of SnG turbo regulars.

just go to sharkscope and look at the leaderboards. all types of crazy swings

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

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Not everybody is going to hit the average EXACTLY. Let's use your coin flip as an example. If everyone were to flip a coin a billion times it isn't going to come up heads EXACTLY half a billion times and tails EXACTLY half a billion times for every single person. IT IS THE GROUP THAT MAKES THE AVERAGE. Some are going to get more heads and some are going to get more tails. Now for most people it is going to be so close that it won't really matter. But there is going to be deviation on both sides.

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If the sample size is large enough, it will be so close for EVERYONE that it won't matter.

Let's take flipping a coin 1 billion times. Nobody, is going to have a 50.5% heads and 49.5% tails. Sure, it WILL be a few flips off from 500 million, 500 million, but the percentage it will be off is so low as to be satistically meaningless.

Short term, I've flipped a coin 15 times and had it come up heads, so what, it's short term.

Same thing in poker, short term some are going to be lucky and some unlucky, and tournaments are short term.

The level of skill difference long term is so much greater than the level of luck that luck becomes meaningless.

Ivey isn't a winning player because he's somehow on some trillion to one odds streak of luck, or even that's he's ever so slightly lucky than others, it's because he's skilled.

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

Everybody keeps missing my point. I am not trying to equate skill with luck. I am keeping them separate. I am saying the person who has the best skill AND the best luck is going to be the most dominate in the long run.

Again "luck" may just be defined as having the percentages go your way or how many times you beat the percentages. But luck plays a huge role in poker. Many times a poker player can make the right decision but still lose the hand. You are right, luck has nothing to do with how good a poker player is, but it has a lot to do with the final out come of many hands.

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Again, they miss the point. I am not equating luck with skill. Ivy is a very skilled poker player. I am just saying his luck is probably on the better end as well. It makes for a great combination.

And you are wrong when you say EVERYONE. If it were possible to have an infinite amount of time and an infinite sample size. You would eventually find someone who in a billion throws actually threw all heads or all tales.

Obviously we don't have infinite time or an infinte sample size, so we will probably never see something that drastic. But we will see deviations that can make a difference.

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

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Again, they miss the point. I am not equating luck with skill.

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No, we understand the point you are trying to make, it's just your point is wrong.

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Ivy is a very skilled poker player. I am just saying his luck is probably on the better end as well. It makes for a great combination.

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That's equating skill and luck. You are saying he has both, you have ZERO proof that Ivey has more luck than most, in fact, he could have less luck based on your arguement, and still be a winning player because his skill is greater than his poor luck.

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And you are wrong when you say EVERYONE. If it were possible to have an infinite amount of time and an infinite sample size. You would eventually find someone who in a billion throws actually threw all heads or all tales.

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No, you wouldn't because time itself is not infinite. What you are arguing is a logical fallacy. Infitity allows an infinite number of an infinite possibilites because infinity cannot be divided by another number, but time itself is not infinite, thus it's not possible to have these possiblities.

If the Universe existed for a trillion years, and every atom in the Universe had the opportunity to flip a coin, one billion times, you still wouldn't have single instance that was 49.5% to 50.5% much less a flip of one billion of heads.

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Obviously we don't have infinite time or an infinte sample size, so we will probably never see something that drastic. But we will see deviations that can make a difference.

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They can only make a difference in a small sample size, the influence of luck over a large sample size becomes noise drowned out by skill. Since tournaments are a small sample size, extreme probablities of luck can drown out skill, but even here that is rather rare.

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

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Not everybody is going to hit the average EXACTLY. Let's use your coin flip as an example. If everyone were to flip a coin a billion times it isn't going to come up heads EXACTLY half a billion times and tails EXACTLY half a billion times for every single person. IT IS THE GROUP THAT MAKES THE AVERAGE. Some are going to get more heads and some are going to get more tails. Now for most people it is going to be so close that it won't really matter. But there is going to be deviation on both sides.

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If the sample size is large enough, it will be so close for EVERYONE that it won't matter.

Let's take flipping a coin 1 billion times. Nobody, is going to have a 50.5% heads and 49.5% tails. Sure, it WILL be a few flips off from 500 million, 500 million, but the percentage it will be off is so low as to be satistically meaningless.

Short term, I've flipped a coin 15 times and had it come up heads, so what, it's short term.

Same thing in poker, short term some are going to be lucky and some unlucky, and tournaments are short term.

The level of skill difference long term is so much greater than the level of luck that luck becomes meaningless.

Ivey isn't a winning player because he's somehow on some trillion to one odds streak of luck, or even that's he's ever so slightly lucky than others, it's because he's skilled.

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QFT

i dont know what else to say to OP that we havent already tried

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

But if you have an infinite amount of people flip a coin an infinite amount of times you will never see it. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Re: Interesting take on poker pros
 

I'm not saying anything about who is better than who and why. Here's a different way to put this:

For any pro athelte, amateur athlete, whatever. For anyone that does anything where results fall into a somewhat normal distribution. For those individuals that have had great success, so Tiger Woods, Phil Ivey, etc. It is far more likely (not a certainty by any means) that their results as to date are better than their real long term performance. They will never reach their long-term expectation, because the long-term is too long. I agree that this effect is probably most exaggerated in poker.

Let's say someone you play against has a winrate of 20 bb/100 over 50000 hands, and the average winrate for the site/game/level is -3 bb/100 hands. Now this player is clearly exceptional, and is many std devs above the average population. If you evaluated his results independently, you would assume that he is just as likely to be a long term 18 bb/100 winner as a 22 bb/100 winner. This is not true, because we have an entire population to compare him to. It is much more likely that his true long term winrate is closer to the mean of the population. The same thing applies to poker, golf, and life. Not really debatable, just math.

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Not really debatable, just math.

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I agreed with everything you said until this last sentence. The math your describing called "Bayesian Smoothing." Where and when it is appropriate to apply Bayesian Smoothing is hotly (well, maye only warmly) debated and therefore IS debatable.

I liked your synopsis, though.

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Again, they miss the point. I am not equating luck with skill. Ivy is a very skilled poker player. I am just saying his luck is probably on the better end as well. It makes for a great combination.

And you are wrong when you say EVERYONE. If it were possible to have an infinite amount of time and an infinite sample size. You would eventually find someone who in a billion throws actually threw all heads or all tales.

Obviously we don't have infinite time or an infinte sample size, so we will probably never see something that drastic. But we will see deviations that can make a difference.

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Forgive them Craig, they don't understand. Those that bring up this point are accused of trying to rationalize why others have been more successful at poker. However, it's just stating truth. It's a huge longshot that Phil Ivey hasn't been on the + side of the luck curve, even if he's the best player to ever walk the face of the earth.

As a side note, if we're betting $1 on heads and tails on tosses of a fair coin, there's a 10% chance one of us is up over $52k after a billion tosses. If the charts of that match were published, people would say that person is clearly the better coin tosser, as luck evens out in the end, and there's no way a person could be up 52k after a BILLION tosses, betting only $1 a toss.

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Again, they miss the point. I am not equating luck with skill. Ivy is a very skilled poker player. I am just saying his luck is probably on the better end as well. It makes for a great combination.

And you are wrong when you say EVERYONE. If it were possible to have an infinite amount of time and an infinite sample size. You would eventually find someone who in a billion throws actually threw all heads or all tales.

Obviously we don't have infinite time or an infinte sample size, so we will probably never see something that drastic. But we will see deviations that can make a difference.

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Forgive them Craig, they don't understand. Those that bring up this point are accused of trying to rationalize why others have been more successful at poker. However, it's just stating truth. It's a huge longshot that Phil Ivey hasn't been on the + side of the luck curve, even if he's the best player to ever walk the face of the earth.

As a side note, if we're betting $1 on heads and tails on tosses of a fair coin, there's a 10% chance one of us is up over $52k after a billion tosses. If the charts of that match were published, people would say that person is clearly the better coin tosser, as luck evens out in the end, and there's no way a person could be up 52k after a BILLION tosses, betting only $1 a toss.

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no you still dont get it, if he is up 52k after a billion tosses then he hit 50.0003% his side of the coin......the more tosses the closer that number will be to exactly fifty....period......if he tossed it 10 billion times and was up 300k the percentage is still dead on 50 pretty much(and even though more money closer still to 50%). having 52k flips on your side after a billion flips is not much, that miniscule amount of favorable luck isnt making someone a top pro who doesnt have the skill.