[HN Gopher] Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Pok...
___________________________________________________________________
Reflections on Luck and Skill from the Part Time Poker Grind
Author : jjxw
Score : 93 points
Date : 2024-07-22 18:47 UTC (1 days 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.
| csa wrote:
| > 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.
| 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
| fartsucker69 wrote:
| the sum here is the sum of wins or losses across all players.
| for you to win, someone else has to lose. in an economy
| everyone can be a winner.
| _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.
| brigadier132 wrote:
| When two people are continually raising eachother in a
| poker game they are doing it because there is an
| probability of winning the pot. It remains zero sum.
|
| edit: The economy being positive sum has nothing to do
| with the way wealth is distributed.
| psd1 wrote:
| When is down to two, it's zero-sum.
|
| Income inequality does not imply zero-sum.
| jstanley wrote:
| If you think the economy is zero-sum how do you explain
| that there is plainly more wealth now than there was 200
| years ago?
| muffinman26 wrote:
| 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.
| WalterBright wrote:
| A simpler way to put it is poker is a win/lose game, while
| markets are win/win.
| pverghese wrote:
| Taxes are the rake in the economy.
| maest wrote:
| And yet, the total wealth goes up over time.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| That's only the case if you want to pave your own roads
| and dig your own well.
| creer wrote:
| 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.
| csa wrote:
| > 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.
| 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.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| It's the hardest way to make an easy living.
| keyle wrote:
| Thanks for your candid report. Not enough people tell it how it
| is, and everyone thinks they're special.
|
| Fact is, a lot of top players also have deals on the side, with
| brands and ambassador things. I feel you need those deals to
| make up for the bad runs.
|
| I love the game, but the variance can inflate egos and the
| grind makes other hobbies more attractive.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Thanks for your candid report. Not enough people tell it
| how it is, and everyone thinks they're special.
|
| That's a good point, too, one I failed to mention. A lot of
| people are losing poker players, but they don't know it. They
| don't keep records, and they don't manage and analyze their
| bankroll over time. A losing poker player has a negative EV.
| If you buy in to 20 $1000 tournaments, bink one of them for
| $15K, you're on top of the world, but guess what, you're a
| losing poker player. Cash players are even worse. They donk
| off $500 a night but only remember that time last week when
| they were up $5000 and cashed out. Congratulations, but your
| EV is still negative.
|
| By my own measure, I was a losing poker player for most of my
| years playing the game, and I have a spreadsheet to prove it.
| jSully24 wrote:
| I thought this describes many gamblers: remember the wins,
| quickly forget the losers, be it pull tabs, blackjack,
| slots, etc.
| MaxfordAndSons wrote:
| It does, but there is a crucial difference between poker
| and most of those other forms of gambling, in that it's
| _possible_ to be a long term winner at poker, as opposed
| to games that structurally favor the house. So, you have
| to be dumb to think you can beat slots long term; you
| merely have to be delusional to think you can beat poker
| long term.
| yourabstraction wrote:
| A similar thing happens with stock and crypto traders. They
| do a ton of trading during a bull market and feel like a
| genius, because they bagged a few big wins, but they
| downplay all their big losses. At the end of the year and
| once short term capital gains are factored in, they end up
| making less than the total market index, but due to poor
| record keeping are convinced they're some kind of trading
| savant. Once the market turns down they'll likely lose it
| all and be forced to become a social media influencer
| selling bullshit trading courses to unsuspecting victims.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Yeah. It's difficult to keep track, especially in cash
| games. But to be pro is to treat it as a business. I
| completely agree.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I think a lot of what you said probably applies to day trading,
| too.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| I was thinking this very thing. At the start of COVID I stuck
| 20k into a trading account. It went up, it went down, it went
| up again. But overall I'm probably about break even. Which is
| too say I did a shitload of researching, buying, selling,
| watching, worrying and waiting and paid myself a fat zero for
| all that wasted time and energy.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| Volume is incredibly important for any truly serious endeavor.
| Bryan Caplan's excellent post Do Ten Times As Much makes the
| point succinctly. [1]
|
| I've come to believe the real reason people shouldn't pursue
| these kinds of sports or games professionally unless they're
| born with a deep thirst for winning them is twofold. First, if
| you love it from day one, the chances that you're actually
| better than average are higher than they would be for a
| randomly selected person in the population (e.g. Nike CEO Phil
| Knight really was able to run a 4-minute mile in college).
|
| But second, deeply enjoying the game makes the requisite 10
| (20, 50, 100) thousand hours you need to become a true pro go
| _much_ faster than for someone who 's just putting in the reps,
| and it even gives you drive to do related things in the likely
| case that that doesn't pan out (e.g., Nike CEO Phil Knight did
| _not_ become an Olympian after college, he instead sold
| Japanese shoes out of his car for half a decade or so as a side
| hustle to track and field meets across the country while
| working a day job).
|
| [1]: https://www.betonit.ai/p/do-ten-times-as-much
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I particularly agree with the second point. Having enough
| hours is absolutely necessary to grow into a pro. And the
| number of hours spent is a non linear function, in two
| perspectives, from my observation:
|
| First, spending 10 1-hour session produces way less pro-ness
| than spending 1 10-hour session. Every programmer who
| attempts a difficult (pro) project can probably attest to
| this.
|
| Second, not all X hours/days produce the same pro-ness.
| People have plateaus that seem to stuck somewhere. But you
| need those plateau X hours/days too. I have a theory that one
| can avoid as much plateau as possible by always challenging
| oneself with an almost impossible -- yet still doable
| project. But it's difficult to get right, so a lot of people
| get a very long plateau, or burnout, and then quit.
|
| PS: So eventually, anyone who is serious about a career must
| spend his hours efficiently on high quality (aligned to the
| career path, while challenging, but not impossible) projects.
|
| PS2: The freedom to spend one's time is absolutely important.
| Marriage and children could bring havoc to this freedom so
| people should think carefully before treading into the water.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| That perspective makes me wonder how much you were actually
| paying yourself per hour even if your net gains were in the
| tens of thousands?
| creer wrote:
| 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".
| 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 deck 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 :)
| interroboink wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow... You feel that his skills as an
| illusionist somehow helped him win on that scratch lottery
| ticket?
| eschneider wrote:
| 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...
| WalterBright wrote:
| I thought the people that administer the lottery keep
| track of the winners, and investigate any statistically
| anomalous winners.
| eschneider wrote:
| You may have noticed that "every ticket a winner" scratch
| cards are no longer a thing.
| interroboink wrote:
| > mastering the luck
|
| I feel there are multiple notions of "luck" in common use and
| the ambiguous term leads to misunderstandings.
|
| In my mind, the purest form of luck is, by definition, not
| something that can be mastered. It is 100% beyond one's control
| to influence. Examples might include: your genetics, flipping a
| fair coin, etc.
|
| But lots of people talk about "luck" as though it's something
| that somehow one take advantage of in a willful way. They say
| "make your own luck." Or perhaps "put yourself in situations
| where you're more likely get lucky." Or maybe "master luck"?
|
| That's all fine, and is a worthwhile topic, but I would call
| that "skill". Maximizing one's odds of something (even
| something involving luck) is a skill.
|
| Perhaps by "mastering luck" they mean not allowing it to psych
| you out -- even if you're on a long losing streak, even while
| doing everything right. But again, I'd say saying level-headed
| is a straightforward skill (difficult though it may be).
|
| Anyway, that's my little rant on the ambiguity of the term
| "luck" (:
| thornewolf wrote:
| the quote GP is considering "mastering luck" as understanding
| emotionally that sometimes you will lose. the quote asserts
| that handling your emotions is more difficult than the skill
| of the game.
|
| so i think there is a chance that the quoted person would
| agree with your comment here, as I think it is orthogonal to
| the quote
| 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.
| cortesoft wrote:
| > Personally I would rather take the luck out of it
|
| Then you should play Chess, or some other perfect information
| game. There are popular games that don't involve luck.
| annacappa wrote:
| I do and I play duplicate bridge, a game that has taken the
| luck out of a card game. I just like poker theory - I ran a
| bot for years - and I just don't like variance that much and
| I guess I like the game for the strategy more than who has
| the most chips at the end, although obviously without the
| hazard it's not anywhere as entertaining
| MaxfordAndSons wrote:
| Curious what do you mean by "I ran a bot"? Like, you
| programmed and/or operated a bot that played on real money
| sites?
| annacappa wrote:
| I programmed and ran a bot that played on real money
| sites.
| MaxfordAndSons wrote:
| Oh, so you cheated people out of their money. That's not
| cool.
| piltdownman wrote:
| Not in the slightest. No different than a player playing
| optimally or with tight adherence to a strategy like
| Brunson's SuperSystem. Game Theory Optimal Poker is just
| the given when playing MTT - although many platforms have
| some form of Real Time Assistance detection.
|
| Even in live games they use poker solvers in between
| breaks to optimise your playing potential and reduce the
| range of 'playable hands'.
| MaxfordAndSons wrote:
| Yes in the fullest. For one thing it's against the ToS of
| every site. But it's also just plainly unethical. Even
| the most elite players are merely reaching a moderately
| accurate approximation of optimal play, which completely
| pales in comparison to a bot that can find it on every
| hand. Of course a bot that simply assumes opponents are
| playing co-optimal strategies will only be minimally
| exploitative, but more sophisticated bots can easily
| incorporate historical data and find correct maximally
| exploitative deviations against opponents in real time,
| which again is something that even the best players are
| only able to do accurately a fraction of the time.
|
| Also it's laughable to suggest that playing optimally is
| "just the given" in MTTs, which are arguably the softest
| format available where almost nobody in a given field is
| playing anywhere close to optimal. And even more
| laughable to suggest that modern bots are akin to players
| adhering to SuperSystem, a poker strategy book written
| nearly 50 years ago which was already extremely outdated
| before the advent of solvers 10 years ago.
| MaxfordAndSons wrote:
| > Personally I would rather take the luck out of it and attempt
| to normalize (perhaps by playing duplicate hands)
|
| There's something called "match poker" which does exactly that.
| piltdownman wrote:
| The reason poker is a successful game, outside of the inherent
| fun, low barrier to entry, and high skill ceiling, is that you
| can leverage one or many different skills to achieve victory
| hand to hand.
|
| This includes 'soft skills' like body-language reads, speech-
| play, false-representation, baiting players into non-optimal
| play, as well as the underlying mathematical basis.
|
| The luck element - known elsewhere as RNG Jesus - is mitigated
| completely over 10,000 hands by appropriately skilled players.
| There's a reason the composition of the final tables of the
| WSOP can be so static year on year, multiple bracelet winners
| wouldn't be a thing otherwise .
|
| A fully optimised 'safe' player can be beaten both short-term
| and long-term live by a player who is skilled in reading tells,
| or simply bluffing. The BBV may be different, but the concept
| of a 'hero fold' exists for a reason - and is often more
| satisfying than a 'hero call' to veteran players.
| pbj1968 wrote:
| The only conversation more tiresome than a poker thread around
| here is a diet and exercise thread, but the competition is neck
| and neck.
|
| Yes, yes, all of you are poker, chess, and diet masters.
|
| Hooray.
| bsder wrote:
| This article is quite nice in pointing out that even if you are
| good, you _still_ have a 33% chance of losing money long term.
| I don 't think any other article has really mentioned that.
| nhggfu wrote:
| not what the article points out.
| interroboink wrote:
| 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, rather than just saying "do what I did, and you can win
| too!" [1]
|
| I'm surprised there was no mention of modern machine learning
| "solvers" for poker, which can get very close to perfect play.
| The game is not truly solved in the game-theoretic sense, but so
| close as to make very little difference, as I understand it. Some
| professional players do strange things like look at the second
| hand of their watch, as a source of randomness as input to their
| decision making, since ideal play requires some true randomness
| in your actions.[2]
|
| So, in addition to the "results-based vs. process-based" angles
| presented in the article, I'd say there's also a "mathematics-
| based" consideration. At least for poker, where all the rules are
| perfectly clear. Harder to apply that to real-life poker-esque
| situations like founding startups, of course.
|
| [1] As always, relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1827/
|
| [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/18/magazine/ai-technology-
| po... -- NYT "How A.I. Conquered Poker" (alt link:
| https://archive.is/QbXXE)
| WalterBright wrote:
| > 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.
| dambi0 wrote:
| What courses / subjects would you recommend?
| interroboink wrote:
| > ... 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.
| adfjalkfja wrote:
| online is getting pretty dicey these days sadly
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| Are there specific instances or issues? I am curious if you
| mean cheating, collusion, fraud, etc...
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| > you mean cheating, collusion, fraud
|
| Yes, all of those things.
|
| There are teams at the same table all working together by
| communicating with each other about what hands they have. The
| sucker at the table is the one not part of that team.
|
| Also, it's software, which means it can be written to favor
| the house.
|
| Online gambling for real money is the equivalent of just
| setting your money on fire.
| piltdownman wrote:
| "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.
| jajko wrote:
| "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.
| badpun wrote:
| 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.
| woah wrote:
| > Once you have identified an activity as being more luck than
| skill driven, a person's process for the activity starts to
| become a much stronger signal for whether or not they are
| actually any good.
|
| This is the central point of the article, and I don't think it's
| true. If it were as easy as "following a good process", then
| anyone could get rich investing.
| jjxw wrote:
| This is a point worth clarifying. I think a lot of people
| actually do get rich investing. It just turns out the "good
| process" in this case is leaving your money in a diversified
| portfolio for decades. This leverages making a bunch of bets
| that on average have a positive expected value over a long
| enough time horizon that you are able to realize the gains.
|
| There are also certainly other ways to have an edge in
| investing (quant firms come to mind), but I think the most
| realistic option for "anyone" is readily available in the form
| of low fee index funds and a long time horizon.
| afc wrote:
| > I think a lot of people actually do get rich investing.
|
| https://youtu.be/H5jPJQ5cVGU?si=KoXd4H3FOkLZ1y06 has an
| interesting counter-point. You need to fuel your returns with
| savings.
|
| I guess it's a subtlety -- in the end, since you said "for
| decades", and if you adjusted your wording sightly (such as
| "help you reach your financial goals", instead of "get
| rich"), the underlying message is similar. But I figured I'd
| share the link in case you find it interesting.
| jjxw wrote:
| Yeah, agreed, love the Plain Bagel and the generally sane
| takes from that channel.
|
| "Get rich" is definitely too broad of a target and probably
| has too many connotations with "mansion and luxury cars"
| when, as you identified, what I meant with that statement
| is closer to "financial goals" or, more tangibly, something
| like "comfortable retirement".
| yuliyp wrote:
| The article demonstrated that skill / correct process is not
| sufficient for success. However, for making estimates of future
| results, looking at the process to gain insights into the EV
| rather than looking at past results can be more fruitful. Just
| looking at past results often results in falling victim to
| reversion to the mean.
| jmpman wrote:
| 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.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| 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 a table of fishes. I don't know if I'm thinking too
| much though.
| creer wrote:
| Isn't that a legitimate part of learning professional poker?
| To measure how much you play against (now) known strong
| players?
| nhggfu wrote:
| decent post.
|
| i used to play tournaments 12-14 hours a day back in the glory
| days. most important things for me as a MTT (multi table
| tournament) grinder were discipline, game selection, bankroll
| management, good note taking, study, volume.
|
| these days i chuckle at how some people are selling 70% of their
| MTT action at 1.3 markup - thus freerolling. a nice variance
| killer if you can get away with it / justify it.
|
| grinding life > grinding poker, imo.
| canistel wrote:
| 1. This has many parallels with the concept of _Resulting_ - _our
| tendency to equate the quality of a decision with the quality of
| its outcome_ , which was conceptualised in the book _Thinking in
| Bets_ by Annie Duke, which although a great work, I have to admit
| I did not finish.
|
| 2. Even though the element of chance is inherent to Bridge too,
| Duplicate Bridge is a clever attempt to nullify the role of luck
| in tournaments. The same hand is played in different tables (by
| different teams), and points are scored depending on how you
| fared in comparison to the other table. So, rather than playing
| to win, you play to do better than your counterpart in the
| _other_ table. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplicate_bridge
| JohnMakin wrote:
| 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.
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