THERE IS NO
SUCH THING AS LUCK!
By
Glen Peterson (Copyright
2001)
Thats
right! You heard it here first. There is no such thing as luck. The word should be
banned from the English language. At least from all forms of gambling.
Nowhere
else in the world is the belief in this superstition more prevalent than in a poker
room. Players have their lucky seat, their lucky dealer, their lucky coin. Elephants,
Disney characters and all sorts of figurines line the tables across America. There
are players that dont cash other players money, and others that wont touch green chips...
its enough to drive a sane man crazy!
The
Websters Collegiate Dictionary defines luck as: noun, fortune,
good or ill; chance. Look up chance and you find: noun, that
which happens (We all know what else happens in
life). Now, if you still believe in it, define luck,
fortune or chance in tangible terms.
It cant be done. The sooner you stop believing in things you cant touch or see at
the table, the better off your poker game will be.
Luck,
or the concept of luck as it applies to poker is nothing more than temporary patterns
in an otherwise random event. All poker hands are random. The order and placement
of cards can not be pre-determined. Take 2 identical set up decks, change the placement
of just one card, in one deck, from the bottom to the top, deal them out and youll
end up with 2 completely different sets of hands. Factor in shuffles and burns and
randomly mucked cards, and the assortment changes every time. Therefore, anytime you
see what appears to be a lucky streak, a hot player or seat, or a unbelievable run
of cards, good or bad, you must realize that it is a temporary pattern in a random
event. It is also known, in poker terms, as a standard deviation.
Lets
look at it this way. If a dealer were to deal 1,000,000 hands to 8 players sitting
at a poker table, and all 8 players stayed to the river, each seat or player would
win 125,000 hands + or - about 1/2 %. The 1/2 % is the standard deviation. This is
pretty much a mathematical certainty based on odds and random card placement. If every
pot were the same size and the house took a rake on every hand, it would be nearly
impossible for any player to win money.
So
how does a poker player make money? Well in real life, a winning poker player would
make more money on his 125,000 winning hands and lose less on his 875,000 losing hands
than a weaker player would. This is the poker players edge. In addition, in real life,
not all of those hands will go to the river because an expert player could get another
player to fold a hand early that might otherwise win on the river. This is an additional
edge.
Every
casino in the world has operated on this same principal since the dawn of gambling:
Edge. The casino has a built in, mathematically certain, edge in every game that assures
them a profit, over time. Because all gambling is based on the betting on the outcome
of these random events. If luck were a real thing, then eventually it would rear up
and break every casino, given time. But it doesnt because the standard deviation is
factored in and even when a player wins more than the odds say he should, theres an
equal and offsetting loss by someone, somewhere. And in the end the casino will still
build that new hotel.
A
poker player doesnt have a predetermined mathematical edge. He starts out with an
even edge, card-wise, with every other player. A poker player has to make his own
edge through skill. If you think of every hand you play as just 1 of 1,000,000 hands
in a string of random hands, you may learn to take luck out of the equation. Remember
that in that string of 1,000,000 hands you start out, mathematically speaking, not
capable of winning more than 87% of them!
But
wait, you say, that guy last night was so lucky. He won so many hands against me.
So now were back to luck, this intangible, uncontrollable force that rules the game.
A good friend and I were talking about this the other day and he pointed out how anyone
who believes this was living
a huge contradiction. On the one hand they believe that they are a skilled player,
yet they admit that they have no control over the outcome of their game because of
luck. If it really exists, and you cant control it, then why would you ever play at
all? But you
are a skilled player and you know it. So in reality, you do understand
that there really isnt this unseen force guiding your poker fate. You are in
control. You get better with every session. Congratulations! Youve taken the first
step in becoming a non-believer!
To
be a winning poker player (not a lucky poker player) you must come to terms with this
issue. Understand that if you play this game long enough you will see most anything
happen. Quads will get beat. Your aces will continue to get cracked occasionally by
gut-shot straights. The list goes on and on. Every bad beat is just one of those 875,000 losers.
But understand too that every time a lucky player gets out on you with a worse hand,
then you are one hand closer to the time when things even out again and the odds that
were in your favor hold up.
So
next time you sit in a game, grab the seat that gives you a positional advantage over
a lesser player, not that lucky seat. Forget about the lucky streak the lady in red
has been on. A streak is always a past tense item. In means nothing on this next hand
because cards dont remember. And when the doofus in the cowboy hat racks up your two
pair by making trip deuces on the river, congratulate him on a fine hand while you
take stock in the fact that YOU are the master of your own destiny and nothing else
matters.
By
the way, anyone seen my rabbits foot?
Copyright © 2001 CheeseyPoker.co.uk
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