Poker Gods or Fallacy?

[phish]

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But, this still seems wrong to me. WTF is a "luck credit"? Luck has no memory, right? I seem to be contradicting myself, but thats the problem...

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Actually, there's a website you can go to to see what your current luck credit is. I'll try to dig up the link and post it.

Last time I checked mine, I was overdrawn on the poker luck, but had tons remaining in my chicks account.

[mvdgaag]

Lol [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I've used up the chicks, but traded some luck for some more.

[Ferdinand Peelen]

Poker is ofcourse very different from a coin-flip (binominal) series of events. But even if you simplify a sequence of hands to win/lose where you should win a certain expected amount of hands based on statistical probablility I suggest looking at a normal distribution graph to understand why the poker gods will very rarely give you what you "should" win or lose in the long run.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution has the blurb. The way I interpret this is that when doing 100,000 coinflips the chance of it being exactly 50,000 heads (though compared to other outcomes the most likely) has only a very small chance of happening. The chance of it being 100,000 times heads or tails is obviously extremely small. In between you have areas of results.

One could (mistakenly) argue that a poker player with a 10,000 bankroll who plays with an exactly average skill with average/reasonable blinds should break even in long run. I say that in the long run there's a 66% chance that his chipcount will be between 13,333 and 6,667 but a whopping 33% chance that he'll lose or win more than 1/3d of his bankroll.

My conclusion; there's a good chance the Poker Gods aren't even going to be remotely fair to you in the long run! Though that could translate into a huge bankroll if you're lucky!

NB: In fact, in real life the chances of you being extremely lucky or unlucky is actually often bigger than statistics would tell you. This "fat tail" concept (tails of the normal distribution curve) is now almost undisputed amongst scientists who use the normal distribution to predict the probability of outcomes in reality.

[WJL]

I did some work with statistics and research in a prior life, so let me add a couple of things to this that are relevent to poker.

It is certainly true that with any probabilistic event, like heads on a coin flip, over a large number of trials the probability of that event happening will tend to converge on some number, say 50% if the coin is indeed fair. Then, if we stage a second trial, we can assign a particular probability that a given number of 'heads' will occur. The smaller the number of 'flips', the harder it is to say how many 'heads' will come up; smaller samples have higher 'varience'.

What does this mean to us as poker players? I'm not sure it means much at all. Truth is, how we play the hands we are dealt means so much more than what the particular hands we are dealt turn out to be that over the long term, luck can be discounted. We know that there are people who are consistent winners. We have good reason to believe that most of them are not cheating. Given that this is true, these players must have skills that allow them to overcome the natural variance in cards we all experience. The cultivation of those skills is what this site is all about. Getting your money in with the best of it is what this game is all about, and if you can do that successfully, over the long term, you will win.

Now, that being said, I also believe in rushes. Rushes are not all about just getting a run of cards, but in knowing how to press the advantage when some fortunate cards for you put your opponents on tilt. The cards Doyle might get in his rushes might not, in reality, be any better than the cards his opponents were getting; likely it was that he was very good at reading his opponents and using their responses to his good fortune to his advantage.

[cdlarmore]

not accurate, each sample is unique and individual, after a massive sample size (200k hands) your odds should even out. Go to BBV forumn and read about 20k hand cold streaks for craps and giggles.

[RobNottsUk]

It's fallacy!!

The only way to be a favoured one of the Poker Gods, is to "Bet your Hands!", and to know odds and card distribution probabilities.

Some restraint is required against passive players, who under-bet, all too easy to read them as 'weak' and correct their error for them!

[oliman]

I think pretty much everything has been said, but just thought I might point out one thing that I didn't see which kinda helped me understanding the whole thing in my head.

Obviously you don't get luck credits but you don't have to get lucky to even out you just need to carry on as expected.

Say your tossing a coin again and the first 10 all come up heads. You currrntly have have 100% heads record which is unexpected. If you toss another 90 times and it works out even (as expected) you now have 60% heads and 40% tails. Toss it another 900 times and you have 51% heads and 49% tails. Another 9000 times and you have 50.1% heads and 49.1%. You see without ever correcting itself the margin has got smaller and smaller (obviously it will never be EXACT but close enough for it not to matter). Of course it's not impossible you could get 10K AA's in your life and everytime you lose. Extremely improbable but not impossible [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[indianaV8]

For sure you can say poker gods are owning you luck, and sooner or later you'll get it.

Proof: When you die, you break even.

P.S. Only one correction, they don't own you 0.18, but 1/0.0001889568 (1/0.18^5).

[govman6767]

The math does not matter and the odds don't matter.

if you win 80 hands with AA and win on ave. 1 dollar those 80 times and lose 100 dollars the 20 times you lose no amount of math is going to save you.

[malorum]

I believe in Dungeons and Dragons you have a luck characteristic.
I guess the Dungeon Master could allow a local game mod, that increases your luck characteristic everytime you make an unlucky roll for a saving throw or the like.

This would simulate the idea your getting at. Unfortunately You may find it hard to find evidence of things happening this way in the real world.