Do you believe in Luck?

[Antiquehunter]

Concur - 54 hands is waaay too small a sample.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Well post-flop, there is a lot more information available (3 out of 5 community cards dealt), and the odds of the AK beating QQ post-flop are dramatically different than 52:48 depending on the flop.

I understand that, but isn't the premise that at the point where he went all in, his actual odds of winning were ~1:2 (that we can know when both players turn up their cards). Obviously, you could recalculate the odds after the flop, but if they went all-in pre-flop, there's nothing either player can do about it. So we're dealing with the odds of winning the hand as they were at the point when skill was no longer involved.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Concur - 54 hands is waaay too small a sample.

Or at least too small to find 21 wins significantly different from the probability. If he went 1 for 54, I suspect that would be a significant outcome (and it would make me question the premises before I'd cook up a notion of inherent personal "luckiness" or "unluckiness").

 

[sadhatter]

Okay, here's the situation. My husband's a poker player. He likes the Texas Hold-em game and plays quite a bit on-line and a couple of times a month in a garage or basement game. He's constantly going on about his bad luck, how he never seems to catch the right card no matter what the odds.

I say, you're focusing on the bad beats and not paying attention to the wins. He swears his luck is phenomenally bad. I'm a professional statistician. I tell him to collect data and I compute the probability. So he did. And I did. And he has had consistently bad luck! Given the number of hands he's collected data on, the probability of luck as bad or worse than that is less than 10%. He is running fairly consistently at 40% wins, both overall and for a running 25 game average, for a situation that should be about 50/50.

In the next paragraph, I'll explain the data collection and analysis we're doing. I'd appreciate any suggestions for improving either.

He is only collecting data on one particular type of hand. A showdown situations where he and one other player are All In before the flop. In addition, he's only looking at a the outcome when one of the two sets of two cards is a pair and other person had two over cards. The probability of winning is approximately 50/50. (It's actually more like 48/52 but so far, I've just been computing the odds at 50/50). He terms this a 'race'.

He started collecting data back in March. He was just keeping a running total of how many 'races' he was in and how many he won. He is currently at 21 wins out of 54 races. Assuming a 50/50 probability of winning races, the probability of wining 21 or fewer out of 54 is 0.0668.

He been meticulous about recording outcomes of all such races win or lose. I've recently talked him into recording what the actual cards were that he won and lost with, so I should be able to start computing the probabilities more accurately.

He is, at least, feeling vindicated regarding his complaint about bad luck.

Assuming the stats are done properly ( no reason for me not to as it does not effect my point.) , there is an easy explination.

**** happens.

As someone who loves role playing games, i see dice rolled constantly. And some people just roll worse than others, it is the way random stats work. This isn't to say if the person spent 300 hours rolling a dice it wouldn't even out, but in small doses, the way games are played, someone is going to be the one getting a lot of ****. Because someone else , somewhere is getting no ****.

In a set of data as large as " poker players" it would be more weird if there was no anomalies, such as people who win a lot or loose a lot. Think of how many people on earth play poker.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Right, but her husband is saying that he's been unlucky. I'm saying that she can't find out if that's true by examining a very small percentage of the hands he's played.

Well, depending on how you define "lucky" I would suggest that you can't find that true no matter what. That's why I prefer the question to be about whether or not the outcome of these hands is significantly different from the null hypothesis (a predicted ~27 wins out of 54).

At any rate, she's not asking about his luckiness for ALL the hands, but only these particular kinds of hands. So we're not looking to draw a conclusion about his success in the 99.4% of hands he plays. We're only talking about whether or not his number of wins in the remaining 0.6% of hands (and since that's all we're talking about, we're actually talking about 100% of these hands).

 

[NoahFence]

Poker is a game both of luck and chance, but smarter players know how to take advantage of certain situations, and read other players' emotions. It's both.

I do believe in other forms of luck though - finding a $100 dollar scratch ticket in a super market parking lot - that's luck.

 

[Fredrik]

See my posts. I think she's asking, in a coin toss (no skill, 1:2 chance of winning), you've won 21 out of 54, is it significant?

That's one of the things she expressed an interest in, yes. But that doesn't make my comments irrelevant. So why do you keep suggesting that they are?

He's constantly going on about his bad luck, how he never seems to catch the right card no matter what the odds.
...
He swears his luck is phenomenally bad.
...
In the next paragraph, I'll explain the data collection and analysis we're doing. I'd appreciate any suggestions for improving either.

The fact that this method might miss up to 99.7% of the hands played is certainly relevant to the first two statements. The fact that you can do a better calculation simply by checking a box that says "Display all-in EV" is certainly relevant to the last statement.

 

[Quinn]

Depends on how you define 'luck'. If you define it as predictive, then no. If you define it as descriptive of what has occurred, then, yes it exists. The lot of each of us clearly is not equal. So assuming the latter, I said, yes.

I agree with your assessment. But I assumed she meant the former, and voted no.

 

[Akhenaten]

Heh. Typical us.

This is going to be a hooge semantic argument in next to no time.

 

[sadhatter]

Poker is a game both of luck and chance, but smarter players know how to take advantage of certain situations, and read other players' emotions. It's both.

I do believe in other forms of luck though - finding a $100 dollar scratch ticket in a super market parking lot - that's luck.

In regards to this, i would like to point out a story, that is either utterly amazing, or mundane as hell, depending on how you interpret the statistics.

When i was going to get my tattoo, i had a bit of horrid luck, got into a terrible car accident, total wreck for all cars involved ( major bad luck). On the flip side, i came out with not a scratch ( major good luck).

Now in calling the tattoo place, i found out the ****** up, and schedualed me for the next week ( major bad luck.). But then i called around the city and found one tattoo artist with a block of free time that day. ( major good luck, as they were all booked up for weeks when i called the first time.)

As i wandered around town wasting time, i found a 50 dollar bill in a discount store ( major good luck.). But when i went to the tattoo place, a girl was getting one, and kept changing her mind slightly, extending the process and making me wait quite a bit ( Bad luck.).

In wandering around waiting for her to be done i found a film i had been looking for for over a decade, garbage pail kids, for less than 6 bucks ( major good luck.)

Finally when i finally got the tattoo, i realized that due to me being " ramped up" from the car accident, i wasn't really feeling it ( i am good at masking pain, but i do not have a high pain tolerance. And i can say i barely felt it, even when my friend was encouraging the man to make it hurt, and the guy was complying, my guess is because i was a 130 pound short fellow not complaining about the pain.)

**** happens, sometimes it happens wierdly.

 

[Antiquehunter]

Could you please run a simulation of the said events Sadhatter through about 10,000 occurrences so we can assess whether that really was luck? (Or folly to get a tattoo?)

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

Depends on how you define 'luck'. If you define it as predictive, then no. If you define it as descriptive of what has occurred, then, yes it exists. The lot of each of us clearly is not equal. So assuming the latter, I said, yes.

^ This. Pretty much this.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Poker is a game both of luck and chance, but smarter players know how to take advantage of certain situations, and read other players' emotions. It's both.

But, again, the OP describes a situation where skill--including the ability to read your opponent's emotions--has been eliminated.

You've got 2 players all-in and both have roughly a 50% chance of winning. There's no more skill involved. The outcome of the hand is just up to chance.

In just that situation, if I'm reading this correctly, Beth's husband has won 21 of 54 hands, and she wants to know if this is meaningful or significant.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

In regards to this, i would like to point out a story, that is either utterly amazing, or mundane as hell, depending on how you interpret the statistics.

When i was going to get my tattoo, i had a bit of horrid luck, got into a terrible car accident, total wreck for all cars involved ( major bad luck). On the flip side, i came out with not a scratch ( major good luck).

Now in calling the tattoo place, i found out the ****** up, and schedualed me for the next week ( major bad luck.). But then i called around the city and found one tattoo artist with a block of free time that day. ( major good luck, as they were all booked up for weeks when i called the first time.)

As i wandered around town wasting time, i found a 50 dollar bill in a discount store ( major good luck.). But when i went to the tattoo place, a girl was getting one, and kept changing her mind slightly, extending the process and making me wait quite a bit ( Bad luck.).

In wandering around waiting for her to be done i found a film i had been looking for for over a decade, garbage pail kids, for less than 6 bucks ( major good luck.)

Finally when i finally got the tattoo, i realized that due to me being " ramped up" from the car accident, i wasn't really feeling it ( i am good at masking pain, but i do not have a high pain tolerance. And i can say i barely felt it, even when my friend was encouraging the man to make it hurt, and the guy was complying, my guess is because i was a 130 pound short fellow not complaining about the pain.)

**** happens, sometimes it happens wierdly.

If these events are meant to be evidence for personal inherent "luckiness" or "unluckiness" I would suggest it's just an example of confirmation bias. We're lacking the information we'd need to know what the probabilities of any of these events are and, therefore, whether these events are significantly different from random chance with some level of confidence.

Now, if you only define "luck" as events happening consistent with the null hypothesis (that they are due only to random chance), then I would suggest that that's not the conventional way the word is used, especially when the question is, "Do you believe in Luck?"

 

[George 152]

The harder I work the luckier I get

 

[bigred]

You've got 2 players all-in and both have roughly a 50% chance of winning. There's no more skill involved. The outcome of the hand is just up to chance.

ie luck. Yep.

 

[Beth]

Wow,

Thanks. That was a lot of responses quickly.

Depends on how you define 'luck'. If you define it as predictive, then no. If you define it as descriptive of what has occurred, then, yes it exists. The lot of each of us clearly is not equal. So assuming the latter, I said, yes.

I agree. Depends on how you define luck. The poll is just for fun. It's not meant to be meaningful, but to spark discussion. I voted planet x.

Well post-flop, there is a lot more information available (3 out of 5 community cards dealt)
A pure test of 'luck' would be pre-flop all in, hand X vs hand Y. No more skill involved. Just happens that two overcards to a pair is pretty close to a coin toss, so it makes for an interesting test (I guess - not really interesting to me.)

Yes, this is exactly the data he has been collecting.

Right, but her husband is saying that he's been unlucky. I'm saying that she can't find out if that's true by examining a very small percentage of the hands he's played. I don't know why you're mentioning skill. I wasn't talking about skill at all.

We have a hypothesis. His luck at cards is poor. We set the null hypothesis that it isn't, his luck is just random variation. Now we've been collecting to data to test that assumption. In order to do that, we need, as Antiquehunter noted above, a set of hands were skill is eliminated and that is the data he has been collecting.

Concur - 54 hands is waaay too small a sample.

We're continuing to collect data. As noted elsewhere, preflop all ins are a small percentage of the hands he plays. I can continue to post the results as they come in.

Assuming the stats are done properly ( no reason for me not to as it does not effect my point.) , there is an easy explination.

**** happens.

When we defined a hypothesis as above, **** happens is rejected as an explanation. If the probability is low enough, we shake our heads and try to figure out why. At the moment, I'm stumped on that point.

In a set of data as large as " poker players" it would be more weird if there was no anomalies, such as people who win a lot or loose a lot. Think of how many people on earth play poker.

True. Would it be fair to describe those people as 'lucky' and 'unlucky'?

The fact that this method might miss up to 99.7% of the hands played is certainly relevant to the first two statements. The fact that you can do a better calculation simply by checking a box that says "Display all-in EV" is certainly relevant to the last statement.

Unfortunately, that doesn't discriminate between all ins preflop and all ins after the river. Skill plays a big part of that. We wanted to eliminate skill and just see if his cards are not very good.

Incidently, I played a couple of tournaments with him and recorded all of our cards and outcomes. I rated the cards from 2 to A = 14. His average card value was 8.08 and 8.09, which is slightly above the expected mean of 8. So his cards aren't particularly bad on that score.

But, again, the OP describes a situation where skill--including the ability to read your opponent's emotions--has been eliminated.

You've got 2 players all-in and both have roughly a 50% chance of winning. There's no more skill involved. The outcome of the hand is just up to chance.

In just that situation, if I'm reading this correctly, Beth's husband has won 21 of 54 hands, and she wants to know if this is meaningful or significant.

Exactly. Thanks for reiterating that. My current estimate of the probability that it was just **** happening is a little less than 10%. Not exactly mind-blowingly out of reason, but it's low enough that it can't be used to support the argument that it's just random variation.

I'm also interesting in suggestions for other ways of assessing probabilities of having the winning cards in situations that can be evaluated without including any skill component of the game.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

We have a hypothesis. His luck at cards is poor. We set the null hypothesis that it isn't, his luck is just random variation. Now we've been collecting to data to test that assumption. In order to do that, we need, as Antiquehunter noted above, a set of hands were skill is eliminated and that is the data he has been collecting.

That clears it up and affirms that I have been correctly reading your OP description.

"Luck" is here defined as an alternate explanation for the results--something other than random chance. (I know "luck" and "chance" can seem synonymous, but "variation" really doesn't have the correct meaning in statistics.)

When we defined a hypothesis as above, **** happens is rejected as an explanation. If the probability is low enough, we shake our heads and try to figure out why. At the moment, I'm stumped on that point.

Someone who is better at stats than I am could give you the math, but I'm quite certain that 21 wins out of 54 with roughly 1:2 odds is not statistically significantly different and would not call for rejecting your null hypothesis.

ie luck. Yep.

Except that she's pretty much defining and using the word "luck" to mean something other than random chance. That is, the null hypothesis is that the results are not significantly different from what we'd expect by random chance with some degree of confidence. The hypothesis is that the outcome is due to bad luck.

So the results are not due to bad luck, at least not if you use the term as used in, "Do you believe in Luck?"

ETA: Also the poll would be pretty meaningless, I think, if "luck" were being used as a synonym for random chance.

 

[Antiquehunter]

I'm also interesting in suggestions for other ways of assessing probabilities of having the winning cards in situations that can be evaluated without including any skill component of the game.

Well anytime you are all-in and have been called (rightly or wrongly) that takes any FURTHER skill out of the situation. Of course pre-flop this generally only happens when you have 2 big hands against each other, and either there is a big difference in stack sizes, or 2 people with lots of 'gamble'. After the flop there are loads more situations, especially in todays hyper-aggressive tournament strategies. Some common ones are flopping a set against someone's big draw (or rarely, set over set), flopping a monster draw like a straight-flush draw, and running into someone's set or top two pair... it goes on.

Other 'pure luck' situations would be testing when you play a pocket pair, how often do you flop a set? (should be about 1:8 - the precise math eludes me at the moment, but its readily available). Or holding a suited ace, how often do you flop the flush draw, or even flop the flush? Its generally more important to know how to play these hands post-flop (and when to play them at all) rather than how often you get 'lucky' with them. Or even how often you get 'unlucky' with them. The secret is always making the 'right' decision - let 'luck' sort itself out, as it will, over time. Some days it seems you can do nothing wrong and the chips are spilling all over in front of you. Other days you get solid starting cards and they consistently get cracked, even though you're playing them well. Some days it seems you get a stream of never ending 83os. Some days you can't miss a flop. In the long run, if you're making the right DECISIONS, the luck will even out for you and for all the players.

ETA: As was intimated earlier on - simply tracking the frequency with which you are dealt certain starting hands can be used to 'test luck'. You 'should' get dealt pocket aces 1:220 hands (or thereabouts). Indeed, you can easily determine the probability to receive ANY of the Hold'em starting hands. After testing a squillion hands being dealt, you could see how 'lucky' you were on your hand distribution. Your starting cards are 'pure luck' (assuming its a straight-up game).

There are software 'add on' tools out there that you can use that will track these kinds of situations for you automatically. The focus is more about whether or not your moves are making you money (as sometimes you are semi-bluffing or stone-cold bluffing when you move all-in post-flop - or you should be, if you expect to ever get called when you actually have a monster and want action). However playing with one of these add ons would help you gather data quickly.

Also, getting one of those simulator programs I mentioned would help you as well, although this may lack the sensation of testing 'your' luck. You really would be testing whether or not the math is 'correct'.

 

[bigred]

Except that she's pretty much defining and using the word "luck" to mean something other than random chance.

Oh OK. I just answered the poll question and admit I didn't read much of the OP. There is such a thing as luck was all I was getting at.