Interesting take on poker pros

[RickA]

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.

[RoyalMag]

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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!

[holyfield5]

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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.

[CraigJ]

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.

[CraigJ]

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.

[holyfield5]

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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.

[CraigJ]

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.

[CraigJ]

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.

[Cent]

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.

[pipedreamz]

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