[HN Gopher] Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Pok...
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Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind
Author : jjxw
Score : 35 points
Date : 2024-07-22 18:47 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thehobbyist.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thehobbyist.substack.com)
| RyanAdamas wrote:
| Wasn't if Phil who said something to the effect of, "If it wasn't
| for luck, I'd win every hand!" Which seems pretty much the thesis
| of this writing (though without the arrogance); ultimately
| resolving in, process as a better indicator of skill than
| results, and the best deduction of process in luck skewed results
| is consistency over time which essentially requires more data to
| deduce.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| For what it's worth, people have studied what appears to be
| subject to a lot of random chance to me, a non expert - fantasy
| sports, and found skill plays a significant role and this study
| references poker studies if you have more interest.
|
| https://epubs.siam.org/doi/abs/10.1137/16M1102094
| sdenton4 wrote:
| 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 have any real chance of
| winning.
|
| But! The variance still matters a lot for the skillful players:
| their chance of winning is 1/10 instead of 1/1000, and for the
| baseline folks the chance of winning is basically zero.
| jonahx wrote:
| 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.
| brigadier132 wrote:
| This is why, for earning money, you should participate in
| positive sum games like the real economy. Poker is worse than 0
| sum, its negative sum.
| snikeris wrote:
| Perhaps in a casino taking a rake. But if you're playing w/
| friends? The good times make it positive sum. Even in a casino,
| the players can be getting enough utility / enjoyment out of
| the game that it's positive sum.
| brigadier132 wrote:
| Yes you are right but "pros" are playing with rake typically.
|
| In a way you can consider poker 0 sum or positive sum
| depending on the utility you derive from the enjoyment of
| gambling. But that should also factor in the negative utility
| from gamblers that lose
| _gmax0 wrote:
| Care to elaborate on how the real economy is positive sum and
| poker is negative sum?
| brigadier132 wrote:
| 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
| positive sum. If two people trade they only engage in trade
| if the transaction is mutually beneficial.
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| 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.
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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 financially rewarding.
| You need to play -a lot- to get good, and then you need to play a
| lot as a good player to make money. It is really a lot of work.
|
| If you are not a winning poker player (in other words, your long
| term EV at the table is negative), you're just going to lose
| money on average, so playing more means losing more. It only
| makes sense to play in that case if you actually enjoy playing
| the game and treat your losses as the cost of entertainment.
|
| But if you _are_ a winning poker player, you still won 't win
| enough to rely on the income unless you are playing A LOT. And by
| a lot I mean every day, for hours a day. And even more if you
| play online because the level of play is so much stronger online
| than live.
|
| And then, even if you are a winning player, _and_ you play a lot,
| AND you have enough average cash flow to make it worth it, you
| are still going to have periods where variance wipes you out and
| you 're down for months straight. It's pretty brutal.
|
| After all this time, I decided I'd rather get a different hobby
| than spending so much of my time grinding away in a smoky casino.
| I just play (infrequent) home games now.
| saucymew wrote:
| "Poker is a combination of luck and skill. People think mastering
| the skill is hard, but they're wrong. The trick to poker is
| mastering the luck. That's philosophy. Understanding luck is
| philosophy, and there are some people who aren't ever gonna fade
| it. That's what sets poker apart. And that's what keeps everyone
| coming back for more." -- Shut Up & Deal
| trhway wrote:
| >Poker is a combination of luck and skill
|
| Luck follows (or at least positively correlates) with skill :)
| 30+ years ago in our company of friends in the university
| dormitories we had a guy who had the card desk handling skills
| of a major illusionist (and those skills were naturally a
| source of significant income for him). The guy was also
| tremendously lucky - well beside mere being alive and without
| broken bones while applying his skills for income :) - in
| particular once he won an amount enough to buy 1-bdrm apt in
| St.Petersburg back then on a scratch lottery ticket that he
| bought at a random place on our way while we were walking to
| some business meeting in a city that we just arrived that
| morning. If it were a skillful illusion, then it was way beyond
| anything i've heard or seen before :)
| annacappa wrote:
| The reason poker is a successful game is because bad players can
| win. Otherwise why would a person who was bad at the game stake
| any money at all. Personally I would rather take the luck out of
| it and attempt to normalize (perhaps by playing duplicate hands)
| but I imagine it would be quite boring for non poker nerds and
| therefore non lucrative for everyone.
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