Embracing Probabilities

I think the hardest thing for the non-experienced player to understand about poker is the concept that you can lose when you make the right play. So many people have come up to me and said (in essence) "Poker has to be all luck because I was watching a final table on TV and this guy was always ahead when the money went in and he end up in last place." And certainly that is true, often times the player who plays the best is not rewarded. Its seems to go against the meritocracy concept the US is said to embrace.

The thing is poker is all about the concept of probabilities. And probabilities is a concept that seems clear on the surface. If you flip a coin there is a 50% chance that it'll be tails. But the more you burrow into the deep underpinnings of future predicting, it become problematic to many people. Such as the fact that if you flip a coin 20 times in a row and it turns up heads every time, what are the chances that it will be heads on the 21st time? Same as before: 50%. So #1, probabilities are independent events. But at the same time, if you flip that coin 10,000 times, by the laws of math, it'll be heads 5,000 times almost exactly. Wow.

I had a recent run in with the probability monster, actually three run ins. Last week, I get all my money in with pocket kings (about $700). I'm up against Ace-King. I lose to a straight. Three days later I get all my money in (about $1500) with pocket aces against King-King. I lose to a set of kings. Just the day before yesterday I get all my money in with King-King (about $900) versus Ace-Queen and Jack-Jack. I lose when an Ace hits the board. I'm not saying these occurrences aren't painful. They are (for a little while anyway). Poker is a streaky game as is the case for anything involving probabilities.

But the way to consider it is, I think, in terms of a master, lifetime list. When these situations come up, your going to win most of the time, but you are going to lose as well. In the case of the last scenario, you'll win 2 out of every three times AND when you win you'll be getting 2:1 on your money. No real gambler would ever pass that up. But you WILL lose one out of every three times as well. So when you lose, you need to put it into the loss list and forget about it. Its inevitable that it will happen. But probabilities are an immutable law of nature. In the end, you'll be a winning player.

Trust me.

Is Poker Luck or Skill?

Another common question I've been getting on these radio interviews revolves around the question as to whether poker is gambling or is it a game of skill. To me, someone who has played lots of poker at all different levels over the years, the answer seems very clear.

In the short term, poker has a large luck component. Let me illustrate it this way; If I were to play you one hand and I got pocket kings and you got pocket aces, you'd probably win a lot of money off me. But you were "lucky" to get aces when I got kings. However, if we played every day for three months, all the card disbursement probabilities ("the luck") are washed out. That is, you and I are going to get aces and kings the same amount of times. Therefore the game turns into one of who plays the various situations better. i. e. Minimize their losses and maximizes gains. The results are now essential based on pure skill.

Its analogous to the casino that sets up a table for playing craps. They know that the probabilities are 55% in their favor (or thereabouts) and they know on a daily, if not hourly, basis how much money that table will take in based on the traffic to that table. If the take is below a certain level, they know something is wrong.

Probabilities are a very ephemeral concept. But they are as rock solid as any mathematical concept. They are carved in stone. The more often you flip a coin the closer and closer the distribution will approach 50%. Yet each flip is independent of all the other flips. So even if you flip a heads twenty times in a row, the chances of the next flip being a heads are still 50%. Kinda weird when you think about it. Shouldn't the odds tilt back in favor of tails since it has fallen behind? Nope. It doesn't tilt back yet over time the two outcomes will, for sure, equal out.

So if you play a statistically significant number of hands, all the luck is essentially pulled out of the game. I estimate that you need to play somewhere around 500 to 600 hours of poker to reach this level. Consequently, its quite easy to see if you are a good poker player or not. Play 600 hours of poker, keep careful and honest track of your wins and losses and see if you are in the red or in the black. If you're ahead, then you know what you are doing. If you're way ahead, you're a first rate player. If you're in the red, don't give up your day job just yet.