Luck?!?!!????

Very interesting things I've been hearing about the concept of luck. This post falls under the category of poker imitating life or is it the other way around?

Bill Gates was asked; "To what extent was it just pure luck that Microsoft became as big as powerful as it did?" His response was that luck played a big part. It was luck that he developed computer skills as a youth instead of some other skill such as tiddlywinks. It was luck that he hooked up with the perfect partner. It was luck that he got into the marketplace just as the personal computer was taking off.

Sergei Brin was asked to what extent was luck the reason Google got as big as it has gotten. He answered that it was lucky that he found the perfect partner. It was lucky that he got into the market at the right time. etc.

All the time we hear that luck is so important in poker. Sure its important. Its important in every human endeavor. There is no getting around the fact that much of human course depends on factors that are not in that humans control. i.e. luck comes into play. Now is it 100% luck that Gates and Brin were successful? No, of course not. They were good at the skills they needed and were hard working and creative. But those factors alone do not guarantee success by any stretch. You gotta have a little luck. The more the better.

Then it comes to how you define luck. Is it luck (bad) that I lose all my chips to a loose player when I have the second nut flush when he's got the nut flush. Well kinda. But I was never ahead and many would argue that I was outplayed to certain extent. But luck was a certainly a factor.

More often we think of luck when we are ahead in the hand. Top set against a straight draw kinda thing. But this is the weakness of the unpatient, inexperienced player. Luck happens. My favorite player handling luck is Chris "Jesus" Ferguson. I've seen him lose with a full ouse on the flop to a runner runner higher full house (1:90 Leader). He simply stood up, shook his opponents hand with a smile and walked off. Which is all you can do and all you should do. Your job as a poker player is to get your money in good. i.e. when the odds are in your favor. Then let the probabilities do their thing. You'll win in direct proportion to these odds, which means, more often you will win.

So come on already. Stop sweating the bad beats. They'll happen. And they'll keep those weak players coming back.

Thinking about Time

Do you ever start thinking about a concept and the more you think about it the more mysterious and unknown it becomes? Lately I've been thinking about the concept of time.

I have always noticed (and I'm sure you have noticed it too) how time does not always seem to move at the same pace. When I'm in a good poker game, for instance, time seems to go by quickly. When I'm immersed in a writing project, time moves even quicker. When I'm waiting in the Thai restaurant for my take out order, time slows way down. But is that time itself or how we are perceiving time? Maybe time is only a perception.

But time itself is measured in increments that are supposed to be very specific. Did you know that the "second" is

the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.

It used to be 1/86,400 of one rotation of the earth. Don't ask me how they came up with that. Why 1/86,400 and not 1/100,000? I'm sure the original development of the second was the average time for a human heart to beat once or the touch football concept of saying the word "Mississippi." Then they backed that period of time into the time of the earth to rotate. In any case, this wasn't working out anyway because the time it takes the earth to rotate is lengthening. Our days are getting longer. (Another strange concept.)

The real problem with all these approaches is that time in actuality could be moving faster or slower at different intervals. We can use man-made (artificial) devices to measure it, but we have no idea whether we are accurate.

I was playing at the Borgata the other day and I suffered a bad beat and lost my stake. The usual situation when a set on the flop gets blasted by a flush drawn on the river. Now the first sensation is pain. (I never continue playing after this happens, by the way, and I don't recommend it since poker is a very mental game and your mental state is not ideal.) But as time goes on, the pain dissipates. And it dissipates at different rates for different people. This makes me think that time might be individually based. After all, don't older people feel time as moving faster than young people. The theory being that the unit of time is a much smaller percentage of their entire life span lived so far. Won't a mosquito feel (if a mosquito can "feel.") time very slowly since their entire life span is only a few weeks? So time is relative. Right? But that doesn't really work because time is a universal concept. This brings us to Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Time must have a duel nature.

Which led me to believe that time might be controllable in a certain sense by the individual. We can choose to live fast and make time move fast. But that doesn't make sense to me because why would we want to hasten the time to the day we die. Don't we want time to go slow, so we can savor life and all its amenities?

So I've decided that I will control time. I will take things slow, I'll contemplate my surroundings. I'll enjoy those times when time seems to fall away, but I'll try to savor them to the maximum. I don't think we can ever really understand how time moves. It's just one of those mysteries of life that along with many others that keep me thinking.