Mathematical truth about poker: Some people are really unlucky. Poker and luck: how to approach their relationship correctly? In poker there is always a certain segment of players who will never succeed in this game. These are those who are waiting for instant results

All poker players have so-called “sworn enemies” - those players who constantly have luck against them at the poker table. Sometimes this may be a strong regular, but in most cases it will be a recreational player.

And the reason for this is quite obvious: such players are famous for playing a large number of hands and chasing any draw. Consequently, sometimes these draws are covered by them and they can run over their opponents. And then it seems that they just get lucky all the time - more often than others.

This state of affairs is difficult to come to terms with, especially for less experienced players. Therefore, the tips in this article are designed to help you get out of this situation.

Opponents are lucky for a reason

What is luck in poker? This is a situation where the hand with . For example, your opponent closes against your top pair. In such a situation, a flush draw has a lower probability of winning, less than 30%, because there are only 9 cards in the deck that can ensure a win.

If you say about someone that he got lucky in a hand, it just means that he played poorly. After all, not a single strong poker player would call against the odds, having only a 30% chance of winning.

But the presence of bad players and their mistakes is exactly what makes poker so profitable. Sometimes their draw will be closed, sometimes luck will smile on them. Mathematics will always win in the end. This means that if a player plays incorrectly, he will definitely end up in the red in the long run.

Don't get personal

So actually you should really be happy that there are people in the game who are willing to give their money to you in the long run. Yes, their luck may be against you today, but in reality they are simply handing over their money to you - over a period of weeks, months and years.

Therefore, it is important not to personalize individual such players. That is, you do not need to concentrate on losses against a specific opponent. You need to focus on the mass of bad poker players who are willing to put their whole stack in with 30% equity.

Because here's the thing: as long as you approach table selection correctly, you will always have fish at your tables willing to give you their money. And someday their luck will stop, and then you can calmly return all the lost money and become a profit.

Another useful strategy is to try to think about poker the way people in Las Vegas think about gambling games (such as roulette, craps, slots). All of these games are basically impossible to beat. The casino has a very small but clear , so in the long run the player simply cannot win.

That's why gambling operators always say goodbye to you with a smile, even when you win and take money from them. It doesn't matter to them, because tens of millions of tourists will come to them year after year, and in the end the math will work in their favor.

So don't take it as a personal offense if one fish keeps running over you at the poker table. Look at bad poker players as one big fish.

One of them may have luck against you today, but if you use a solid winning strategy time and time again, you will be the one who has the last laugh. strategy to defeat them, then you will always laugh for weeks, months and years. And this, of course, is the only thing that really matters.

Don't react with irritability and tilt

Obviously, fish sometimes get lucky, but this does not speak about their skill - they make the wrong decisions and generally play poorly. And you should try to consider these situations more broadly. But it is quite clear that this is not an easy task.

It's not always easy to stay calm in the heat of the moment when someone is running over you over and over again at the poker table. We are all human, and at some point we all begin to take such incidents personally. Offline, this is even more difficult to survive, because you are forced to look at the fish who is joyfully raking in your chips after moving.

But here's what you have to remember: by allowing yourself an emotional reaction, you open the door to irritation. This will cause you to start playing poorly, and you will most likely start losing even bigger pots. At such moments, players lose control, start playing too many hands, try to crank, make the wrong calls. And only they themselves pay for such mistakes.

Yes, moving is unpleasant and upsetting, but it is not the end of the world. You shouldn’t turn what happened into a real disaster and just give away the remaining chips all around. Everything may seem very serious at that moment, but this is just the right time to show who the real professional is here, take a deep breath and control your emotions.

If you feel like you're getting too emotional, there's no harm or shame in taking a break from playing or even ending your poker session for the day if possible. If you go on tilt because of your opponents' luck, the only one who loses in this situation is yourself.

Don't be afraid while playing

Another important thing to avoid in a situation like this is changing your strategy and playing the coward game. This has happened more than once to every poker player.

This can be called the “skeletons in the closet” syndrome. In such a situation, you constantly think that you have lost - even before you play the hand. This can lead to you playing sub-optimally in many spots. For example, you can start limping with such a strong hand, or just check/call postflop with a hand like QQ.

Because of this reaction, you will independently reduce your profit. This is no different from tilt - you start playing worse, therefore you start losing more.

So you can end up in a vicious circle, because due to suboptimal plays you will lose more and more, which will cause even more incorrect plays. Sure, you can psychologically save yourself from losing another big pot, but that defeats the purpose of poker.

That's the basis of winning poker - you want to get the most out of your good hands and lose as little as possible with your bad hands. Limping with AK or not value betting with pocket queens will never allow you to get the most out of these hands.

“Coward play” is actually a form of tilt that is rarely discussed. But it can be just as destructive as the wild bluffs and bad calls discussed above.

It's important to remember that no matter what happens at the poker table, you need to make the right decisions over and over again. Here's how to win this game.

Do you want to win more money in poker? If yes, you need to change your attitude towards the game. Why? Because everything else follows precisely from this. Your strategic and tactical decisions arise through the work of your consciousness. And if your thoughts are poisoned by wrong ideas, it will only lead to bad decisions.

If we put aside the countless misconceptions that prevent people from becoming successful gamblers, there are three main ones that you should immediately banish from your head. we'll talk about them.

1. “I’m swinging wildly (or upstriking)”

No one has yet been able to dispel this misconception better than Tommy Angelo in his book " Elements of Poker»:

“All my upswings and downswings of any length and intensity had one thing in common. They weren't in your head. They were only in my head. And this is true for any player with his upswings and downswings. Neither the first nor the second actually exist. These are just products of your thinking, like the past and the future. Everything that ever happens happens in the present tense. And how can you have a streak in the present tense? No way. And since you are in the present tense, then at the moment there is no styrik in your life. The streak only exists when you think about it, and when you stop thinking about it, it disappears. It appears and disappears only in your head. When you come up with another streak, you believe that it really exists, because your consciousness tells you so. But the truth is that there is only the hand you are playing at the moment."

This may seem like babble at first, but it's actually true.

If you can convince yourself that streaks don't really exist, maybe you can handle another thought and realize that all streaks come to an end. So why shouldn't it end today?

If you're sitting down at the tables thinking you're going to lose again today, maybe you'd be better off not playing at all? Until you can create a positive attitude towards the game.

Conversely, if you feel that you will never lose because you are upstreak, remember that statement again and curb your enthusiasm. All streaks end, and it is likely that your upstreak will end today if the feeling of invulnerability makes you play extremely carelessly.

2. “I have to get dirty at all costs in order to at least break even.”

This is exactly the thought after which you can start saying goodbye to your bankroll. Get her out of your head!

Losing in poker is inevitable, and neither you nor any other poker player can change this truth. Besides, it is not up to you to choose which days to win and which to lose.

Of course, this does not mean that winning or losing depends solely on luck and is beyond your control. But this control is far from absolute, and it is measured in much smaller units than “win today” or “lose today.”

You have control over many small decisions, from choosing whether to play at all given your mood, to choosing limits and tables, and then it's up to you how you play each hand and how you end the session.

Sometimes these decisions together, even if they were almost ideal, will not insure you against loss. Just deal with it. Don't let a small loss turn into a big uncontrollable tilt where you continue to play a subpar game, your opponents seem much stronger, and the RNG is clearly not on your side.

There is a term that describes poker players who do not know how to exit on time and try in desperate attempts to get the session to at least break even - losers. Don't be like that.

3. “I always get run over when I have aces.”

Instead of aces, you can substitute pocket kings, queens, jacks, AK and any other premium hands with which you think you are unlucky. This idea will be equally false regarding any hands.

If you truly believe that you will always lose with these hands, then the only rational decision is to fold them preflop. But you don't do that. Why? Because you know that this is not true, and that you can win with them.

Everyone understands why poker players so often whine about their losses. The problem is that the negative memories associated with losing the same aces (or any other hand) are much more vivid than the positive memories of winning.

Our brains are evolutionarily wired to remember pain better than pleasure. Psychologists have found that the pain from losing a certain amount of money is approximately twice as strong as the pleasure from winning the same amount. It is this inconsistency that creates evil in your mind.

If you plug AA into a poker calculator against five random hands, you will see that aces win only 49% of the time. In other words, they lose more often than they win. And does that make it a trash hand? Of course not! If you run this situation 100 times, on average you will withdraw money half the time, while you will only deposit one-sixth of the pot. That's $3 for every $1. A very good deal - just print money.

Of course, it is not up to you to choose which hands to win with and which to lose with. All you have to do is play each hand to the best of your ability.

This means that with ten top hands you have to be aggressive enough to get maximum value, and fold them when everything looks like you're beat. If you can do this with at least premium hands, it will be one of the most reliable ways to make money in this game.

Let's get back to our aces. If the sight of them brings back painful memories of the time you lost a big pot with them, push those thoughts away. Not only do they serve no purpose, but they are actively preventing you from playing that hand at the moment. And that's your only job as a poker player.

Conclusion

The philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote: “ Our life is what we think about it." The same can be said about playing poker. It is our thoughts that build our game. Every false thought that you banish from your head is another step towards making the right and profitable decisions.

If you feel that any of these thoughts have taken over your entire thought process, ignore them until they disappear altogether. After which more correct decisions will come, and the monetary result will not be long in coming.

Let's examine the concept of distance and dispersion.

In this article we will talk about the influence of luck on your results in poker. How big is this impact? How much do you need to play to match your actual skill level? How do you and your game change depending on whether you are lucky or unlucky? Let's try to find the answers.

Sphere of influence of luck

Let’s immediately determine how much influence luck has when playing poker. To understand this precisely, let us introduce the concept game distances.

Poker distance– this is the number of hands (for cash players) or tournaments (for tournament players) that you have played. The longer you play Texas Hold'em poker, the longer your distance.

The theory of probability, which we all rely on when playing poker, says: the greater the distance present when conducting an experiment (in our case, when playing poker), the less dispersion.

Dispersion– deviation (divergence) between the theoretical result and the practical result. In poker, variance is the difference between your real result and the “theoretical” one, that is, corresponding to your level of poker skills. The longer your distance, the less dispersion.

I’ll give you the simplest example right away. variances depending on length distances: Let's take a very ordinary coin that has two sides. Traditionally, heads and tails.

The chance of each side falling out when throwing a coin into the air is, without taking into account third-party factors, 50%. Let's toss it 10 times. Let’s say the coin lands on heads 2 times and tails 8 times. That is 20 to 80 percent. On average, each side should appear 50% of the time. Thus, the discrepancy (dispersion) The theoretical result (50%) and practical (80% and 20%) is 30%. This is a large variance in percentage terms, but in reality the difference is only six flips.

Another example: let's toss the same coin not 10, but 100 times. Let's say the result is 35 - 65. It is very unlikely that you will get something like 20 to 80. As the number of tosses increases, the results will be closer to each other in percentage terms. In this case, the variance will be 15% (65%-50%). It will almost certainly decrease compared to 10 tosses. Although the difference in the result of dropouts may logically increase (from 6 in the first example to 30 (65-35) in the second).

Finally, let's flip the coin a thousand times. Let's say it turned out 456-544 (45.6% versus 54.4%). Again, the variance decreases in percentage terms (it is now only 4.4% (54.4%-50%), but in quantitative terms it increases again (from 6 in the first example and 30 in the second to 88 in the third).

Let's apply this example to poker. After 1000 hands, you may be unlucky more often than lucky. Let's say 10 times. Over 10,000 hands, this difference may increase to 20, but against the general background of a larger number of hands, this bad luck will have a less significant impact on your result. What can we say then about 200,000, or even 500,000 distributions. Here the influence of luck will be minimal.

That's why we at the Academy often repeat a simple truth. The more you play, the less bad luck gets in your way. And if you play so-so, then the longer the distance you go, the more likely it is that you will lose your money to stronger players. As they say, a day in poker is 90% luck and 10% skill, and a year in poker is 90% skill and 10% luck.

A graph where a strong player was unlucky at first, but as the distance increased, things went uphill

Over a short distance (a day, two, a week) you may be very unlucky. But if you play constantly, month after month, and show your best game, success will not escape you. There are also long downswings (streaks of failure), for example, a month long. But the chance of finding yourself in such a situation is extremely small and is the same for everyone, so you shouldn’t worry about it.

Poker is a game of cold-blooded mathematical calculation. If you do it seriously, you must realize and believe in this axiom. Somewhere you may be lucky, somewhere you may not be lucky - it’s not your concern. You won’t be able to influence your opponent’s only out on the river. Neither trips to a fortune teller nor lucky talismans will save you from this. Your job is to consistently play your best poker based on your skill.

And now we smoothly approach the topic of poker psychology associated with luck. We are all human, and by destroying our opponents to smithereens, we can feel like “gods” of poker. And vice versa, losing day after day, we can lose confidence in ourselves, in our game or in poker as such (phrases about tweaked RNG (random number generator) in online poker rooms confirm this).

My training poker WOD on distance features:

Both states of mind can degrade the quality of your game. By giving in to emotions (positive or negative), you will move away from cold calculation. This is bad and should be avoided. That is why in our training we pay great attention to such issues as “confidence in yourself and your game”, “tilt resistance” and “independence of the result”. After all, if we cannot influence luck, then we need to influence our attitude towards it.

In order not to count on luck and to be in the black at a distance, sign up for the AWS 2.0 Poker Academy course. You will have access to a winning poker strategy, which, if followed, will consistently bring you a win. Click on the banner and apply - you will receive 8 group classes and 3 individual training sessions with a professional trainer for free!

Recently, 53-year-old Vietnamese-American Hong Li entered one of the World Series of Poker Crazy Eights 8-Handed No-Limit Hold'em events with a buy-in of $888, taking with him $888,888 and a bracelet. Remarkably, this was not only his first time cashing at the WSOP, and not only his first appearance at the WSOP itself, it was actually the first time he had ever played in a tournament of this magnitude. Lee himself is the father of five children and the owner of a small nail salon where his whole family works. This victory almost certainly gave him more money than he could earn in the rest of his life.

Stories like this never cease to amaze us, and what’s even more surprising is that they happen every year. Last year, that lucky guy was another working-class Vietnamese-American, Christian Pham, who stunned the poker world with his win in the $1,500 2-7 No-Limit Single Draw event. This was his first experience playing this type of poker, and he registered for the tournament itself by accident.

The concept of "beginner's luck" is as old as poker itself, and the idea that any player can be luckier than another is ridiculed by almost all serious poker players. If you poll these players as to why stories like this keep popping up year after year, most will cite variance, weak field in low-cost events, and confirmation bias of those watching the events. But could there be something more here?

Of course, it is foolish to believe that a beginner will have more or less luck in a particular situation than an experienced player. If a player has eight outs on a flush, it will hit him a little more than 17% of the time, regardless of whether he is a beginner or an experienced player. However, there are several reasons why a player without any experience has a better chance of winning an event than a player with a basic set of knowledge.

You'll be out of luck if you don't try

The first reason that beginners have more luck than average players is that the former simply find themselves in more situations where they can get lucky. Beginners do not know how to evaluate value hands, so they are often shown behind. Paradoxically, this is also true for experienced players, who often float or bluff with little showdown equity, and therefore see more streets with hands that average players would normally fold. In both cases, players have a better chance of making it than their opponents, although the real point here is not a higher frequency of hits, but more “attempts.”

When a player has an advantage over his opponent, he should reduce the variance, but people often forget that the opposite is also true. When you are outexperienced, the best strategy is one that relies more on the luck factor. For example, imagine you are playing heads-up with even stacks and flopping a flush draw. Your opponent is all-in, if you fold you will have 40% of your chips left. Beginners love flush draws and call without understanding their chances. A player with little experience, knowing that the probability of hitting a flush is 33%, will understand that this is worse than his 40% chance of winning if he folds. An experienced player evaluates his advantage in this case and other factors. If he is playing against a better heads-up player, then depending on his stack depth, a 33% chance of hitting a flush may look better than his odds of winning with a chip edge of 40-60 against him.

So, whether he realizes it or not, a beginner can actually increase his ROI by choosing more dispersive play lines, even if those lines have a negative chip EV. In Lee's case, he knew exactly what he was doing, starting with the fact that he came to Las Vegas to "try his luck" and knew that he would have to cheat to beat more experienced opponents. One might question the wisdom of entering a tournament with this starting setup, but once you're there, that's what you need to do. Similar examples can be found in other activities, be it a less experienced fighter fighting to the limit of his ability, or a little brother pushing all the buttons while playing a video game with his older brother.

Predictability is worse than recklessness

Thanks to high variance lines, beginners have a better chance of winning a tournament than average players, but the latter tend to have an advantage in regular hands. A beginner can play any way he wants with any hand. On the one hand, this makes them quite easy to beat by simply playing the odds, but on the other hand, it is very difficult to be absolutely sure how you stand against them and when your value bet or bluff will be successful.

At the same time, a little knowledge can be disastrous, and players who have just begun to learn the basics of the game can be much more predictable and therefore easier to beat. For example, you are facing a player who recently read about semi-bluffs and began to actively use them in his strategy. He check-calls a flush draw flop, and the turn comes with a third card to the flush. You can safely expect him to not have a flush and even bluff him by barreling the turn and river. As a newbie, on the other hand, this situation may have absolutely everything going for it, making it more difficult for you to make a decision.

Seasoned players know the need to sometimes choose stupid lines to make them difficult to read. In Chinese martial arts there is a style known as Zui Quan or "drunken fist", which involves strange, clumsy movements that somewhat resemble the staggering of a drunken person. Although this is all a carefully learned technique, the bottom line is that a drunken bully can be very dangerous due to his unpredictability and suppressed self-preservation instinct. It's the same in poker. While an experienced player is a master of Zui Quan, a beginner is actually a common drunken bully. He, like everyone else, can hurt himself, but you have no idea what will go through his head when you play against him in a hand.

Don't doubt your intuition

Some may disagree here, but a well-developed intuition is one of the most important skills of a poker player (especially a live tournament player), and even more important than any theory. I've been boxing for a few years and have a well-honed technique, but I'm not sure I'd want to spar with a guy who's been fighting on the streets his whole life without any training in fighting technique. Of course, my movements will look nicer until he misses the first blow, but then his practical experience and reflexes will most likely take over.

Not all of us have developed reflexes when it comes to fighting, but almost all of us know how to distinguish between truth and lies because we have been dealing with this from a very young age. Beginners, without any other skills, rely primarily on this instinct. They don't know how their hand stacks up against their opponent's range because they don't even know what a range is. Instead, they make decisions based on intuition. If they think their opponent has a strong hand, they fold; if they feel it's a bluff, they call.

Obviously, no one can rely solely on intuition because opponents are not always that easy to read. However, most of us have a feeling from time to time about what our opponents are trying to do, and both beginners and experienced players listen to this instinct. Beginners - because they have no choice, and experienced players - because they know that their intuition is correct. Sometimes we doubt and are inclined to make decisions that, according to our knowledge, are considered wrong, but our intuition tells us that they are correct in this particular situation.

The hand Lee won the tournament with is a prime example of this. He limped with a pair of deuces, called the raise, and the flop AT4 with two diamonds he called again. The eight of diamonds came on the turn, covering a possible flush draw, and his opponent Michael Lek checked. Lee bet and Lek shoved.

Most of us probably wouldn't have played the hand the way Lee did, even up to this point, but against a check-push on a board like this, the vast majority of players at any level would fold their deuces. They don't hit anything other than a complete bluff, and even if they are ahead, there's a high chance that the opponent has a flush draw and two overcards, which deuces don't have a very good chance against.

Lee's logic was different: His opponent was all-in, and if he called and got lucky, he would win. Meanwhile, his intuition told him that his opponent would not check-shove the flush, but, on the contrary, would try to play it more slowly. Most of us realize that even many of Michael Leck's bluffs are stronger than Lee's hand, but Lee believed his opponent didn't have a super strong hand and that was enough to call. And he was right. Lek had Q-J with a gutshot without a flush draw. None of his 10 strikeouts hit, and Lee won the tournament.

Regardless, it was a very bad play, but Hong Li read the hand well, and if he was a seasoned pro and had something like a ten, we would have called it a great call. In the end, he owed his victory not to “beginner's luck,” but rather to his understanding of his situation, coupled with good instincts and well-timed naivety, which worked in his favor.