Interesting take on poker pros

[Xanthro]

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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.

[CraigJ]

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.

[CraigJ]

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.

[Xanthro]

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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.

[holyfield5]

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[ QUOTE ]
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.

[/ QUOTE ]

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

[chief444]

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]

[admiralfluff]

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.

[Central Limit]

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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.

[Joey Joe Joe]

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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.

[holyfield5]

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[ QUOTE ]
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.

[/ QUOTE ]

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.