One last try
 

Every process in life follows a distribution pattern known as a bell curve. It looks like a bell because most people fall in the middle but a few are on either end (left or right).

Even life itself falls into a bell curve. Unfortunately a few die at an early age (left) while a few fortuante get to live to be over a hundred (right). Most are in the middle and live to be roughly the same age.

Some people live in extreme poverty (left), others have more money than they will ever know what to do with (right). But most are in the middle. That is why middle class is the largest class.

Skill in poker falls into the bell curve. Every person in the world would fall into this category whether thay play poker or not. Most could care less about the game so they fall in the middle. Those who learn about the game, play and practice it, are going to be moving themselves to the right side of the curve. Ivy is on the far right because he is so skilled. Unfortunately if someone was born with a mental handicap they would have to be on the far left.

Now here we go, luck in poker will also distribute into a bell curve. And by luck we mean how well you fair against the percentages. For arguments sake for a 50/50 probability 51 would be considered lucky, 49 unlucky. Just like any other process in life it will distribute in a bell curve. A few will get more than their fair share of luck (beat the probabilites) while a few will get more than their fair share of bad luck.

TO SAY THAT FOR SOME REASON LUCK IN POKER DOESN'T FALL INTO THIS DISTRIBUTION AND WILL EVENTUALLY EQUAL OUT FOR EVERYONE IS LIKE SAYING LIFE WILL EVENTUALLY EQUAL OUT FOR EVERYONE. AND THAT IS REALLY GOING TO HAPPEN.

All I have been trying to say is Ivy is very much on the right in his poker skill. Where his luck falls we don't really know. He may be so far to the right that his luck is on the left and his skill just makes up for it. But if we can find the person who is just as far on the right as Ivy and whose luck (beating the percentages) is also the farthest on the right, then we have just found the most dominate poker player in the world.

Re: One last try
 

Does this really need a 3rd thread?

b

Re: One last try
 

GIVE IT UP PLEASE!!!!
You are just creating clutter in the forum. This didnt need another thread. This could be posted in the other threads. Your arguement is based on saying that certain people are just born with more luck. If you do not see how out in left field that thought process is then I truly feel sorry for you. Luck is a myth. When people suckout on a hand they are not just getting lucky on someone. They are hitting the hand in the certain percent range that it falls under. That doesnt mean they are lucky the hand is following its probability. Over hundreds of thousands of hands and years of playing poker the individual will have hit their hands within perecntage range it is suppossed to. Please go read Sklansky's book on the Theory of Poker.

Re: One last try
 

And yet they continue to post to it adding to the clutter and moving it back to the top.

Re: One last try
 

[ QUOTE ]
Over hundreds of thousands of hands and years of playing poker the individual will have hit their hands within perecntage range it is suppossed to.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes most will, but a few won't. This is why we have our Tiger Woods, our Michael Jordans, our Albert Einsteins, our Bill Gates.

Re: One last try
 

Are you kidding me? What do those people have to do with poker. NOTHING!! Tiger woods and Jordan are athletes who work their buts off they are not lucky people. Stop trying to bring correlation into this with things that have nothing to do with poker. You are presenting illogical examples. Those people have nothing to do with luck.

Re: One last try
 

[ QUOTE ]
Every process in life follows a distribution pattern known as a bell curve.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, no it doesn't. In fact, math has many distributions it uses to describe processes found in life. The one you refer to as "bell curve" is really known as a normal or Gaussian distribution. Here is a listing of others that are used to describe many life processes from proton decay to the patterns of relected light, etc:

Benford • Bernoulli • binomial • Boltzmann • categorical • compound Poisson • degenerate • Gauss-Kuzmin • geometric • hypergeometric • logarithmic • negative binomial • parabolic fractal • Poisson • Rademacher • Skellam • uniform • Yule-Simon • zeta • Zipf • Zipf-Mandelbrot Ewens • multinomial • multivariate Polya
Beta • Beta prime • Cauchy • chi-square • Dirac delta function • Erlang • exponential • exponential power • F • fading • Fisher's z • Fisher-Tippett • Gamma • generalized extreme value • generalized hyperbolic • generalized inverse Gaussian • Half-Logistic • Hotelling's T-square • hyperbolic secant • hyper-exponential • hypoexponential • inverse chi-square • inverse Gaussian • inverse gamma • Kumaraswamy • Landau • Laplace • Lévy • Lévy skew alpha-stable • logistic • log-normal • Maxwell-Boltzmann • Maxwell speed • normal (Gaussian) • normal inverse Gaussian • Pareto • Pearson • polar • raised cosine • Rayleigh • relativistic Breit-Wigner • Rice • shifted Gompertz • Student's t • triangular • type-1 Gumbel • type-2 Gumbel • uniform • Variance-Gamma • Voigt • von Mises • Weibull • Wigner semicircle • Wilks' lambda Dirichlet • Kent • matrix normal • multivariate normal • multivariate Student • von Mises-Fisher • Wigner quasi • Wishart
• Cantor • conditional • exponential family • infinitely divisible • location-scale family • marginal • maximum entropy • phase-type • posterior • prior • quasi • sampling • singular

So I guess first step would be to prove that "luck" actually is normally distributed. How do you know it really doesn't follow a Cauchy distribution?

Re: One last try
 

Not luck. Because they fall outside the bell curve in different areas.

Re: One last try
 

Craig, your whole bell curve is wrong, because even if "luck" were to fall into a bell curve category, it can only do so based on the past, which has no bearing on the future.

Your whole argument boils down to, if two people are equally skilled, the person who gets lucky will win.

That's not some revelation or something new. What you are tying to argue further is that one person is inherently lucky and that person would have an advantage over an equally skilled person. Nobody is inherently more lucky, even if that person has benefited from luck in the past.

The odds of winning the lotto are very small, and it's all luck, winning it once does nothing to increase or decrease your chance of winning it again. If I catch a 46-1 card on the river to suck out, it doesn't change my odds in the future of catching another 46-1.

Also, the curve of luck in poker is very flat over a small number of hands, and exceedingly steep over a large number.

A person who's never played before could beat Ivy in one hand, but that person would stand no chance of being the winner over 10,000 hands.

Re: One last try
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Every process in life follows a distribution pattern known as a bell curve.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, no it doesn't. In fact, math has many distributions it uses to describe processes found in life. The one you refer to as "bell curve" is really known as a normal or Gaussian distribution. Here is a listing of others that are used to describe many life processes from proton decay to the patterns of relected light, etc:

bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • multivariate bell curve
bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve•
bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve•


[/ QUOTE ]

cardcounter,

you can say that. But this is what I read.

Re: One last try
 

[ QUOTE ]
All I have been trying to say is Ivy is very much on the right in his poker skill. Where his luck falls we don't really know. He may be so far to the right that his luck is on the left and his skill just makes up for it.

[/ QUOTE ]

No, that isn't what you said yesterday. You said Ivy's success is luck, and as evidence you provided a recounting of this video where, against all odds, he won three hands of poker.

[ QUOTE ]
But if we can find the person who is just as far on the right as Ivy and whose luck (beating the percentages) is also the farthest on the right, then we have just found the most dominate poker player in the world.

[/ QUOTE ]

Pointless statement, since there is NO WAY TO MEASURE THE THING KNOWN AS LUCK or at least as it pertains to each individual player. This is why people do the thing known as "practice". Luck is uncontrollable. It either happens or it doesn't. Skill can be refined through trial-and-error or education.

Re: One last try
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Every process in life follows a distribution pattern known as a bell curve.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, no it doesn't. In fact, math has many distributions it uses to describe processes found in life. The one you refer to as "bell curve" is really known as a normal or Gaussian distribution. Here is a listing of others that are used to describe many life processes from proton decay to the patterns of relected light, etc:

bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • multivariate bell curve
bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve•
bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve • bell curve•


[/ QUOTE ]

cardcounter,

you can say that. But this is what I read.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, you might get your eyes checked, but I would suspect some type of cognitive disfunction.

Re: One last try
 

[ QUOTE ]

Well, you might get your eyes checked, but I would suspect some type of cognitive disfunction.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmmmm, I conducted an experiment. I looked at your message from 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 75, and 100 feet feet away. I plotted the results, with the x-axis representing distance, y-axis representing acuity. Sure enough, I got a bell-curve. I suggest standing 50 feet away when reading General forum.

Re: One last try
 

[ QUOTE ]
Your whole argument boils down to, if two people are equally skilled, the person who gets lucky will win.

[/ QUOTE ]

Also, don't forget there are many legitimate ways to win.

For example, you hold 10 hearts, 10 diamonds in the small blind. Villain raised on the cutoff. Heads up, the flop is A, K, Q of clubs. You check, villain pushes all-in. You would be foolish, IMO, to call. Too many ways that can go wrong. He's likely got a flush, broadway, royal flush, set or pair of aces, kings, or queens, maybe even two pair.

You fold. He had a pair of nines. Luck was on your side there but you folded the better hand. He may have read you right that if he pushed all-in when he had position, you were gonna fold.

Re: One last try
 

ban

Re: One last try
 

[ QUOTE ]

So I guess first step would be to prove that "luck" actually is normally distributed. How do you know it really doesn't follow a Cauchy distribution?

[/ QUOTE ]

Man, if it did, that would explain a lot of things. Damn those heavy tails baby.

Bell curve or not, all that's relevant to Craig's argument is that overall luck at cards over some time period follows some distribution.

Re: One last try
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Well, you might get your eyes checked, but I would suspect some type of cognitive disfunction.

[/ QUOTE ]
Hmmmm, I conducted an experiment. I looked at your message from 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 75, and 100 feet feet away. I plotted the results, with the x-axis representing distance, y-axis representing acuity. Sure enough, I got a bell-curve. I suggest standing 50 feet away when reading General forum.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmmm... either something is really wrong with your eyes, or something was flawed in your experiment. I would suggest that such a graph would be a linear downward sloping line.

Re: One last try
 

People could really learn a lot from the original post - for those who don't think it's good I suggest rereading it a few times to really try and take in what the guy is saying.

James

Re: One last try
 

I hope you are being sarcastic. His post boils down to saying that because one person is "lucky" they have an effect on the cards they get by just being slightly more lucky than another person. A person being dealt cards in a poker game does not have an effect on the cards or the way they are dealt or shuffled just because they are born luckier than most. Explain to me how I can learn something from that.

Re: One last try
 

It is nearly impossible to be lucky/unlucky at the exact +/- 0 breakevenpoint. Therefore some people are luckier and others are unluckier than average.

Re: One last try
 

As I said earlier. When people suckout on a hand they are not just getting lucky on someone. They are hitting the hand in the certain percent range that it falls under. That doesnt mean they are lucky the hand is following its probability. They may not have a big enough database of hands to calculate from so they may be on higher end at one certain point in time but they will end up with the proper percentages of the hands outcomes over a large amount of hands.

Re: One last try
 

[ QUOTE ]
I hope you are being sarcastic. His post boils down to saying that because one person is "lucky" they have an effect on the cards they get by just being slightly more lucky than another person. A person being dealt cards in a poker game does not have an effect on the cards or the way they are dealt or shuffled just because they are born luckier than most. Explain to me how I can learn something from that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Apparently you could learn something from the suggestion to reread it a few times and try to understand what the OP is saying. Methinks you're not quite there yet.

Re: One last try
 

look u f***ing moron, u think u r smart b/c u have a slight idea of what a normal distribution curve looks like and maybe u even know how to differentiate and integrate b/c u took a course in college? u r makin an ass of urself by postin this piece of s*** over and over. just the fact that u think u r smart by explainin why it is called a "bell curve" makes u an idiot. addin the fact that u don't understand the people that have seriously replied to ur posts makes u a even bigger donkey. it's not a matter of u being right or wrong (which u r), it's a matter of u givin us as examples a couple of hands u saw on tv. anyone who says what they propose must be true b/c they saw 3 hands in poker after dark deserves to have his balls cut off. and it is spelled IVEY, not IVY u retarded piece of s***.

Re: One last try
 

[ QUOTE ]
look u f***ing moron, u think u r smart b/c u have a slight idea of what a normal distribution curve looks like and maybe u even know how to differentiate and integrate b/c u took a course in college? u r makin an ass of urself by postin this piece of s*** over and over. just the fact that u think u r smart by explainin why it is called a "bell curve" makes u an idiot. addin the fact that u don't understand the people that have seriously replied to ur posts makes u a even bigger donkey. it's not a matter of u being right or wrong (which u r), it's a matter of u givin us as examples a couple of hands u saw on tv. anyone who says what they propose must be true b/c they saw 3 hands in poker after dark deserves to have his balls cut off. and it is spelled IVEY, not IVY u retarded piece of s***.

[/ QUOTE ]


this is excellent.

some people with low post counts are actually able to think critically.

(i am not being sarcastic. op should be stopped from starting new threads)

Re: One last try
 

I think OP will soon receive a publishing deal offer from 2+2.

Re: One last try
 

[ QUOTE ]
I think OP will soon receive a publishing deal offer from 2+2.

[/ QUOTE ]

for a book titled this is how fish think.

Re: One last try
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I think OP will soon receive a publishing deal offer from 2+2.

[/ QUOTE ]

for a book titled this is how fish think.

[/ QUOTE ]

More like:

An extremely simple concept that almost everybody should be able to understand, but their arrogance prevents them from even trying to think about it.

Not really a catchy title; it probably could use a little work.

Re: One last try
 

arrogance doesnt prevent people from understanding what he is saying. I understand his arguement my point is it is invalid because the use of a bell curve here is not appropriate.

**Edit: One of the main reasons I feel his arguement is invalid is because it revolves around the idea that some people are luckier than others. My point is how do the cards know who is the luckier person and be dealt in a favoring manor for them. The cards don't favor any one person over another cause they are not biased.

Re: One last try
 

[ QUOTE ]
One of the main reasons I feel his arguement is invalid is because it revolves around the idea that some people are luckier than others.

[/ QUOTE ]

I get the feeling the OP is one of those who in Roulette if black came up 10 times in a row would bet the bank on Red, because the odds of Black coming up 11 times in a row are so small.

Re: One last try
 

I see what you did!
OP is unconvincing. But I read it at least.
Unlike your previous tries. I hope they were better.
How are you measuring where we fit in the bell-curve of life?
Yes I have nothing better to do [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]
EDIT: Would that mark me to the left? [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

Re: One last try
 

[ QUOTE ]
So I guess first step would be to prove that "luck" actually is normally distributed. How do you know it really doesn't follow a Cauchy distribution?

[/ QUOTE ]

Luck (at poker at least) DOES follow a normal distribution. See the central limit theorem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem

Re: One last try
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Every process in life follows a distribution pattern known as a bell curve.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, no it doesn't. In fact, math has many distributions it uses to describe processes found in life. The one you refer to as "bell curve" is really known as a normal or Gaussian distribution. Here is a listing of others that are used to describe many life processes from proton decay to the patterns of relected light, etc:

Benford • Bernoulli • binomial • Boltzmann • categorical • compound Poisson • degenerate • Gauss-Kuzmin • geometric • hypergeometric • logarithmic • negative binomial • parabolic fractal • Poisson • Rademacher • Skellam • uniform • Yule-Simon • zeta • Zipf • Zipf-Mandelbrot Ewens • multinomial • multivariate Polya
Beta • Beta prime • Cauchy • chi-square • Dirac delta function • Erlang • exponential • exponential power • F • fading • Fisher's z • Fisher-Tippett • Gamma • generalized extreme value • generalized hyperbolic • generalized inverse Gaussian • Half-Logistic • Hotelling's T-square • hyperbolic secant • hyper-exponential • hypoexponential • inverse chi-square • inverse Gaussian • inverse gamma • Kumaraswamy • Landau • Laplace • Lévy • Lévy skew alpha-stable • logistic • log-normal • Maxwell-Boltzmann • Maxwell speed • normal (Gaussian) • normal inverse Gaussian • Pareto • Pearson • polar • raised cosine • Rayleigh • relativistic Breit-Wigner • Rice • shifted Gompertz • Student's t • triangular • type-1 Gumbel • type-2 Gumbel • uniform • Variance-Gamma • Voigt • von Mises • Weibull • Wigner semicircle • Wilks' lambda Dirichlet • Kent • matrix normal • multivariate normal • multivariate Student • von Mises-Fisher • Wigner quasi • Wishart
• Cantor • conditional • exponential family • infinitely divisible • location-scale family • marginal • maximum entropy • phase-type • posterior • prior • quasi • sampling • singular

So I guess first step would be to prove that "luck" actually is normally distributed. How do you know it really doesn't follow a Cauchy distribution?

[/ QUOTE ]

OMG you are so S-M-R-T! Your Google skillz are leet!

D-bag.

Re: One last try
 

At the risk of upsetting people for bumping this thread, I would like to add the following:

To those in this thread that responded or agree that luck doesn't exist because results that fall within an expected outcome set are accounted for by the probabilities, I would like to point out that this is exactly how luck is measured.

The less probable the event, the luckier the beneficiary of the unlikely outcome. The converse is also true. The less likely the event, the more unlucki the party that was somehow injured by the outcome.

To the OP:

I think that you may not realize just how difficult randomness can be for people to understand. Your attempt to quantify randomness in the way you did failed for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it seems like you started with your conclusion and tried to find the facts to support it later.

If you really want to try to prove your theory, you should use a significant sample size of all relevant data, and then draw your conclusions from it, not the other way around.

People's brains handle patterns very well, but not randomness. I suggest that you stop trying to find patterns where none exist.

Good Luck

Re: One last try
 

[ QUOTE ]
At the risk of upsetting people for bumping this thread, I would like to add the following:

To those in this thread that responded or agree that luck doesn't exist because results that fall within an expected outcome set are accounted for by the probabilities, I would like to point out that this is exactly how luck is measured.

The less probable the event, the luckier the beneficiary of the unlikely outcome. The converse is also true. The less likely the event, the more unlucki the party that was somehow injured by the outcome.

To the OP:

I think that you may not realize just how difficult randomness can be for people to understand. Your attempt to quantify randomness in the way you did failed for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it seems like you started with your conclusion and tried to find the facts to support it later.

If you really want to try to prove your theory, you should use a significant sample size of all relevant data, and then draw your conclusions from it, not the other way around.

People's brains handle patterns very well, but not randomness. I suggest that you stop trying to find patterns where none exist.

Good Luck

[/ QUOTE ]

Luck is fallacy, just people taking probaility personally.

people see a 2 outer and they cry out omg you are the luckiest guy ever and i am unlucky no matter how many times their hand has held up in the situation.

Re: One last try
 

it has been a while since ive seen worse logic.

congrats.

Barron

Re: One last try
 

[ QUOTE ]
Luck is fallacy, just people taking probaility personally.

[/ QUOTE ]

I understand.

That's what I was getting at when I said that it's very hard for people to understand random events.

You are correct in that they take it personally and have selective memories.

IMO, It is still somewhat useful to represent random events on a scale of lucky vs unlucky for people who are still unable to grasp the entire concept, just as a means of conveying the concepts. In this case, I am just substituting the word lucky for probable, basically.

Since they understand lucky, but not probable, initially, I have found that they become more receptive to hearing you out, if you're trying to educate them or take you seriously if you're trying to confuse them. (like during a game)

Selective memory and small sample sizes will get you every time.

[ QUOTE ]
people see a 2 outer and they cry out omg you are the luckiest guy ever and i am unlucky no matter how many times their hand has held up in the situation.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't often find myself in this situation anymore, but when I do, I like to tell someone who gets upset that I caught a lucky card that I was 50/50 to make the hand.

Either I make the hand, or I don't.

This usually improves my image at the table quite well and often will further tilt the guy who suffered the beat.

In addition, I don't look like an a-hole doing it.

Re: One last try
 

Craig, did you know that the width of the bell curve is inversely proportional to the square root of the number of samples taken?

Basically, the width of the bell curve is measured by the quantity called standard deviation. If you graph the distribution of a player's observed winrate after N hands, the standard deviation will be equal to the standard deviation involved in playing 1 hand (which can be easily estimated, for example PokerTracker does this) divided by the square root of N. If you play enough hands (say hundreds of thousands), eventually the standard deviation becomes so small that the bell curve looks like a spike when you graph it on the same axis as you would graph the bell curve of, say, a 100 hand sample.

I've only skimmed your threads, but this seems to be what you're failing to grasp.