Interesting take on poker pros

[Xanthro]

[ 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.