[Phone Booth]

To answer your question, no, luck has no memory by definition. To say that there are such things as an unlucky person would imply that luck is not based on random chance, but some sort of quality inherent in the person. Then it's no longer luck but your karma - I don't think there's any accepted mechanism by which you can unconsciously influence how cards are shuffled in such a way as to cause you lose money, except by explicit mechanical cheating.

With that said, it's possible that you *have* been unlucky. I don't know my true win/loss-rate but the difference between my "average" 50-hour rate and my actual worst 50-hour live-poker stretch appears to be about 12 buy-ins (where buy-in = 100BB; so for 1/2 game, this would be $2400) and that happened once already over only about 400 hours of play. Hence, even if you were a good player, your downswing (4.5 buy-ins) would not be considered particularly improbable. I lost more than that in a few hours before. With that said, I play just about every hand preflop whereas you sound like a TAG, so it's possible that you should see less variance.

On the other hand, most players dramatically overestimate their skill. Since skill + luck = result and you can't change the result to any meaningful degree (though many lie to themselves), those with decent memory are forced to assume that their luck has been worse than it actually is. The fact that you don't get to see folded hands makes this self-deception much easier. For instance, people remember when their aces are cracked, but not when they hold up, mostly because the hand usually ends more quickly and often without a showdown when nobody can beat unimproved aces. You'd also note that for the same reason, when you're waiting for the train in a subway station with several tracks, your train always comes last - it's because those times your train comes first, you're not thinking about these other people waiting for the other train. Same with buses, taxis, etc. Also when they are several rounds of betting, people tend to remember only when they were ahead, not when they were behind. If you were against one player and were far ahead preflop and behind on the flop, no matter what cards come on the turn and the river, the loser could claim that as a proof that you were unlucky. You yourself even mention:

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Another less interesting one was getting all-in preflop with QQ vs AK for $100 each. Queen in the door, yet a T also on flop, river J gives him the nuts.


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If all the money went in preflop, exactly how he won is irrelevant. You were a very slight favorite and should expect to lose nearly half the time.

Even during my recent insanely hot stretch (when I made 10 buy-ins above my average rate in less than 40 hours), people hit 4/3/2-outers all the time against me in fairly large pots. If you play poker for 50 hours, you expect to be on the wrong side of bad beats of all kinds even if you're running extremely well. It's difficult to quantify how lucky or unlucky you have been on the balance. I recently had a session where I had Aces twice and lost the maximum amount both times and also lost twice out of the five times I had Kings - I still finished up.

Also, the fact that you say $900 is 9 buy-ins, while describing situations where you had a $300+ stack makes it very possible that you play a +EV game when short-stacked (say, 30-50BB) but not with a 100BB+. The examples you chose also may be a sign of this - good preflop hands holding up is a small part of the total amount of luck involved. Also important are 1) someone else holding a very good hand when you have an even better one and avoiding the reverse and 2) someone else deciding to bluff for whatever reason when you happen to have an unfoldable hand and of course avoiding the reverse.

In short, if you are tight and aggressive preflop and play poorly post-flop, you'd be +EV with a short stack but -EV with a sufficiently large stack. Since you're playing worse, effectively, when stakes are higher, this could very well sum to a -EV overall. Note that you're probably paying the casino and dealers $15 an hour or so and possibly some more to cocktail waitresses, -$900 over 50 hours is basically breaking even with other players. Since you choose to only get involved with big hands that you're willing to go far with, whereas your opponents will give up if they don't hit, you'd feel that you're consistently unlucky in big pots.