Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind • Hacker News Board

Re: Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind

#71

Post by JohnMakin » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 3:42 PM UTC

I have played a mix of professionally, casually, and semi-professionally for the last ~20 years, in a broad mix of games and formats - while his points on volume are definitely true and not a new concept, the determination I've also come to over the years playing 10k+ tournaments and probably ~1k of those being live - you will never see the long run in the large multi-table format. I have seen horrific losing streaks, insane winning streaks, and soul crushing break even stretches of years with players that are much, much stronger than I am. Most of my big tournament cashes have come down to a few coin flips, any one of them losing would have resulted in a bust.

Smaller tournaments and cash games have much smaller variance and are what I would recommend for anyone trying to make a living for poker - large multi-table tournaments are moonshots and should be treated as such. His points about staking are valid in terms of "diversification" for a poker pro, but TBH, the staking scene is almost uniformly full of degenerates (on the stakee side) and predators (on the staker side). The fundamental problem is that the venn diagram of a winning/good player but also needs a piece of his action bought tends to be an inherently unreliable set of people.

Re: Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind

#72

Post by eschneider » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 5:46 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #46

eschneider wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be the absolute BEST at scratch lottery tickets. OTOH, "every ticket a winner" used to be a thing, and I had free access to an MRI machine at the time. Sometimes, you make your own luck...

I thought the people that administer the lottery keep track of the winners, and investigate any statistically anomalous winners.

You may have noticed that "every ticket a winner" scratch cards are no longer a thing.

Re: Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind

#73

Post by interroboink » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 6:06 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #49

interroboink wrote: post #21

This is an important topic to me, and I'm glad to see one of the "winners" state plainly how much luck is involved in poker, and by analogy, many other areas of life. I'd love to see articles like this written by someone who did not win, too. It's too bad that people pay less attention to those stories, as he mentioned in the article (c.f. clickbaity title). At least this is a winner admitting the importance of luck,…

> admitting the importance of luck Poker is a mathematical game with mathematically fixed odds. Real life is different in that there is a considerable amount of room to tilt the odds in one's favor. For an obvious way to tilt odds in your favor, stay in school and learn what you're being taught.

> ... stay in school and learn what you're being taught.

Agreed with you there (:

And generally, doing what you (ethically) can to give yourself a leg up is great. But I find that approach/attitude can get dicey when it is then used to cast judgement on other people (I'm not saying you were, just going on a tangent here). Acknowledging the sometimes-overwhelming effects of luck on a person's life, despite their best efforts, has helped me be more empathetic, I think.

If someone is down-and-out, maybe they were lazy or wasted their opportunities, but maybe they didn't, and they just got waylaid by misfortune. Keeping that in mind helps me hold back from shouting at them to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps!" or such. That may be helpful in the former case, but can be hurtful in the latter.

Re: Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind

#74

Post by badpun » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 6:33 PM UTC

jajko wrote: post #69

piltdownman wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Online gambling for real money is the equivalent of just setting your money on fire." Citation/Any evidence would be great, but I won't hold my breath.

"Any gambling for real money is the equivalent of just setting your money on fire". (c) by Jajko, 23/07/2024 It doesn't require advanced studies to realize this, just learn from mistakes of others. Even if 1 in 1000 wins (for now), its a losing game for any honest folks. Scammers prey on simple and powerful addiction and little else, games can be easily rigged in ways you will never realize just as parent describes.

My friend is an honest poker pro who's been making a living from playing online since 2008 or so. He may be "1 in 1000", but that's because online game is tough, not because it's rigged.

Re: Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind

#75

Post by creer » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 6:42 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #6

His section on volume rings pretty true. I used to play a lot recreationally. And by "a lot" I mean probably on the medium-to-high side of recreational, but not even close to pro. Like attending every major regional event and attending WSOP every year for 10 years. Both cash and tournaments. I've stopped because of how much of a tiring grind poker is, and how much time you have to dedicate in order to make it financi…

Also distinction between learning (mostly) and production (mostly). In investing, business and no doubt poker there is nothing wrong with a period of losing money while learning. But you better be aware and be learning and you better not tolerate that period lasting indefinitely.

I hear this often about investing: people get started (losing money) with grossly insufficient education and they do learn for a few years, then give up, move on and blame it on "the professionals" or "science shows". When the fact is, if you start investing and learning at the same time, most likely you will underperform everyone else for a while. It's not because you were stupid; it's not because of "the professionals"; it's that you didn't know. It's an important distinction, and the equally losing opposite of "sunk costs".

Re: Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind

#76

Post by muffinman26 » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 6:44 PM UTC

PaulRobinson wrote: post #13

brigadier132 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poker has a rake and the amount of wealth in the system is the money people put on the table (not even factoring in that gambling winnings are taxed). Meaning the total wealth decreases for every hand played in a raked game. Economic transactions and increasing efficiency are positive sum. You can combine pieces of metal into new alloys and machinery which are more valuable than the sum of their parts. This is positi…

What do you think two poker players still in a hand raising each other are doing? They both still think it’s mutually beneficial. The maths if you have full visibility show it isn’t, but I’d argue that’s the same of the “real” economy too. In the latter example we can point to long-standing increasing income and wealth inequality as a proxy for the house rake at poker.

I don't quite follow this. Surely each poker player who raises thinks that they will take the pot and the other players will lose. So they don't each think that the raise is mutually beneficial. Player A thinks that the raise is beneficial for player A and detrimental for player B, and player B thinks that their call is beneficial to player B and detrimental to player A. Which seems like the definition of 0 sum.

Compare this to something like trading apples and oranges, where one person gets an orange (maybe they are tired of apples) and the other gets an apple (maybe they are tired of oranges). Both gets something they want in exchange for something they don't want.

Re: Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind

#77

Post by creer » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 6:55 PM UTC

brigadier132 wrote: post #11

_gmax0 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate on how the real economy is positive sum and poker is negative sum?

Poker has a rake and the amount of wealth in the system is the money people put on the table (not even factoring in that gambling winnings are taxed). Meaning the total wealth decreases for every hand played in a raked game. Economic transactions and increasing efficiency are positive sum. You can combine pieces of metal into new alloys and machinery which are more valuable than the sum of their parts. This is positi…

This "mutually beneficial" goes often unappreciated or un-noticed. But it's key. Yes, at the limit, nobody forces the poker players to keep playing - they both want to keep playing. Sure. But in economic exchanges, all parties can be growing together. And growing faster the more they work together. All while the economy as a whole is usually also growing. There are parasitic organizations and individuals attached and sucking blood: And the economy can still grow for all the other participants. Within reason on the blood sucking.

Re: Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind

#78

Post by creer » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 6:58 PM UTC

markus_zhang wrote: post #61

jmpman wrote: post #42

I regularly play in Vegas poker no limit hold’em tournaments, and am substantially positive. These are 12+ hour/day, multi day tournaments, and a bad player with luck just isn’t going to last the grind. 90% of the people in these tournaments have no reason being there. The top 10% are solid, and within that group, it does come down to luck.

I think that 90% of the people have no reason being there is the sweet point? But this is tournament so you have to be in the first X to win some return, right? I'm not a professional player but I have observed in more than a trivial amount of occurences there are sharks in casinos picking the right cash table to maximize returns. They seem to know each other and don't play against each other, but always try to pick…

Isn't that a legitimate part of learning professional poker? To measure how much you play against (now) known strong players?

Re: Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind

#79

Post by csa » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 7:48 PM UTC

brigadier132 wrote: post #11

_gmax0 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate on how the real economy is positive sum and poker is negative sum?

Poker has a rake and the amount of wealth in the system is the money people put on the table (not even factoring in that gambling winnings are taxed). Meaning the total wealth decreases for every hand played in a raked game. Economic transactions and increasing efficiency are positive sum. You can combine pieces of metal into new alloys and machinery which are more valuable than the sum of their parts. This is positi…

> Meaning the total wealth decreases for every hand played in a raked game. Economic transactions and increasing efficiency are positive sum.

I get the sense that you are dismissing the value of entertainment in this exchange.

Many of the donators in a given player pool know that they are losers and have a rough budget of what they are willing to lose. They engage in the exchange because they value the entertainment.

I personally see poker games as a transfer of wealth from worse players to better players, with the house taking a cut for creating the market. At higher stakes where most solid pros play, this rake is a small percentage of the wealth transfer.

Note that for many of the losing players, substitute activities for poker are gambling in the pit and/or sports betting. Are these also not part of the economy? What about movies, concerts, and TV? There is value in creating experiences instead of creating things, and poker is an experience that some people like.

To be fair, one of the things that poker is good at is letting people believe they are winners when they are not — this facilitation self-delusion sometimes makes for a bad look. That said, the bank account doesn’t lie, and I’ve seen plenty of avid poker players quit or drop stakes dramatically while choosing a different hobby or form of entertainment.

Re: Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind

#80

Post by csa » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 8:08 PM UTC

jonahx wrote: post #7

sdenton4 wrote: post #4

For things which have some combination of luck and skill, there tends to be a baseline skill for, average results given no/low skill. So in a thousand person event, you'll have some number of people performing at baseline and a smaller collection that have actually shown up with some skill. Depending on how high the skill floor is and how much variance there is, this often means people performing at baseline don't ha…

I know you were probably putting those numbers in as placeholders to illustrate the concept, but worth pointing out the advantage that (even a lot of) skill gives is nowhere close to 100x over weaker players.

> but worth pointing out the advantage that (even a lot of) skill gives is nowhere close to 100x over weaker players.

Not op, but I think you’re right… it’s probably 1000x or infinity depending on how you look at it.

The ev of the median player in a typical tournament is negative, while the pro is positive. As a measure of skill, that metric can’t really be expressed as a multiple.

As for skill level, I think a prob being 100x a rec is probably about right — most people have no idea how much better pros are than they are.

That said, poker sustains interest from recs precisely because the format leans more towards the luck side of the luck-skill continuum than complete information games like chess or go.

So a rec can play head up against a top pro like Phil Ivey and can still win, but that victory would be a function of luck rather than skill. Iterate that spot 100x or 1000x, and the rec doesn’t win very often.