Is Luck Really Against You in Poker? ♠️

Lately I've been feeling like luck just isn't on my side in poker. I can play a hand well, get the money in with the better hand, and somehow the river still finds a way to ruin it. 😂

I know variance is part of the game, but when the bad runs keep coming tournament after tournament, it's hard not to feel like you're cursed.

At what point do you stop blaming luck and start looking for something in your own game? And how do you guys deal with a long stretch where nothing seems to go your way?

Need to wait a litle more my friend.

Lex Veldhuis makes first WSOP final table in 17 years​

Let’s be honest, I don’t really think there is such a thing as being lucky or unlucky in poker. There are probabilities, and learning how to play according to those probabilities is a huge part of becoming a better player. Of course, sometimes you will get your money in with the best hand and still lose on the river. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you were unlucky. If you had an 80% chance of winning, there was still a 20% chance that you would lose. That 20% didn’t disappear just because you had the better hand. I think the mistake is looking at poker hand by hand and judging yourself based only on the result. You can make the correct decision and lose, or make a terrible decision and get lucky and win. The result of one hand doesn’t tell you whether the decision was good or bad. For me, the important thing is learning to understand the probabilities and making decisions based on them. If I keep putting my money in when I have the advantage, eventually the math should work in my favor. I can’t control the cards that come on the river, but I can control the decisions I make before that And when I go through a bad run, I think the first thing to do is look at my own game. Maybe I’m playing too many hands, calling too much, taking unnecessary risks, or simply making decisions without properly analyzing the situation. If I find mistakes in my game, I need to fix them. But if I review my play and realize that I’m making good decisions and simply losing some hands where the odds were in my favor, then I have to accept that too. That’s not a reason to change my strategy or start playing emotionally. Poker is a long-term game. You’re not trying to win every hand. You’re trying to make the best decision possible over and over again. The cards will do whatever they want, but your decisions are what you can control. So I don’t really ask myself, “Am I unlucky?” I’d rather ask, “Did I make the right decision?” For me, that’s a much more useful question.

fzap1983 said:

Sendo sincero, não acredito que exista realmente algo como sorte ou azar no pôquer. Existem probabilidades, e aprender a jogar de acordo com elas é fundamental para se tornar um jogador melhor. Claro, às vezes você coloca todo o seu dinheiro na mesa com a melhor mão e ainda perde no river. Mas isso não significa necessariamente que você teve azar. Se você tinha 80% de chance de ganhar, ainda havia 20% de chance de perder. Esses 20% não desaparecem só porque você tinha a melhor mão. Acho que o erro é analisar cada mão individualmente e se julgar apenas pelo resultado. Você pode tomar a decisão certa e perder, ou tomar uma decisão terrível e ter sorte e ganhar. O resultado de uma mão não diz se a decisão foi boa ou ruim. Para mim, o importante é aprender a entender as probabilidades e tomar decisões com base nelas. Se eu continuar colocando meu dinheiro na mesa quando tiver vantagem, eventualmente a matemática jogará a meu favor. Não posso controlar as cartas que vêm no river, mas posso controlar as decisões que tomo antes disso. E quando passo por uma fase ruim, acho que a primeira coisa a fazer é analisar meu próprio jogo. Talvez eu esteja jogando muitas mãos, pagando demais, correndo riscos desnecessários ou simplesmente tomando decisões sem analisar a situação adequadamente. Se encontro erros no meu jogo, preciso corrigi-los. Mas se eu revisar meu jogo e perceber que estou tomando boas decisões e simplesmente perdendo algumas mãos em que as probabilidades estavam a meu favor, então tenho que aceitar isso também. Isso não é motivo para mudar minha estratégia ou começar a jogar emocionalmente. Poker é um jogo de longo prazo. Você não está tentando ganhar todas as mãos. Você está tentando tomar a melhor decisão possível repetidamente. As cartas farão o que quiserem, mas suas decisões são o que você pode controlar. Então eu não me pergunto: "Estou com azar?". Eu prefiro me perguntar: "Tomei a decisão certa?". Para mim, essa é uma pergunta muito mais útil.

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I read everything carefully and I have one thing to say: RIVER IS CRUEL — VERY CRUEL.

Nah, luck isn’t against you. Luck just hates everyone equally.
You can play perfectly and still get destroyed by some random card on the river. Then you spend 20 minutes thinking, “There’s no way this guy had that.”
But that's poker. You can't control luck, so at least control your decisions. Otherwise you're just arguing with a deck of cards, and trust me, the deck isn't going to apologize.

Das991992 said:

Lately I've been feeling like luck just isn't on my side in poker. I can play a hand well, get the money in with the better hand, and somehow the river still finds a way to ruin it. 😂

I know variance is part of the game, but when the bad runs keep coming tournament after tournament, it's hard not to feel like you're cursed.

At what point do you stop blaming luck and start looking for something in your own game? And how do you guys deal with a long stretch where nothing seems to go your way?

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i say always
poker = 90% luck and 10 % skill .
think about it maybe 😀 gL anyways

Luck word is misnomer and doesnt exist seems you and me both belong to same philosophical background so luck is nothing but outcome of our past deeds also in poker for infinite sample size real world value has to converge to its expected value so skill nullifies luck or randome aspect of game

Poker is a series of independent outcomes, so there is no such thing as being in "an unlucky period" or a "downswing". Every time we sit down to play a new game, its a completely clean sheet of paper, and it does not matter, what happened in the previous 1, 10, 100 or 1.000 games, we played. The mental challenge is to force ourselfes to remember this and just continue to implement the same winning strategy again and again, regardless what happened in recent games.

This is of course assuming, we have a winning strategy. If we continue to lose in specific games, then with time it becomes less and less likely, that this is only due to variance or "bad luck", and it becomes more and more likely, we are simply not beating that game. And then we need to either find another game, we can beat, or study and improve.

Das991992 said:

Lately I've been feeling like luck just isn't on my side in poker. I can play a hand well, get the money in with the better hand, and somehow the river still finds a way to ruin it. 😂

I know variance is part of the game, but when the bad runs keep coming tournament after tournament, it's hard not to feel like you're cursed.

At what point do you stop blaming luck and start looking for something in your own game? And how do you guys deal with a long stretch where nothing seems to go your way?

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At least you won the tournament, every game ends with a losing hand. Sometimes we remember that last hand and we forget about those hands that lead us to that point. Think about how many hands you won with the lower chance, and how that allowed you to end in better positions.

Marshmalo1994 said:

At least you won the tournament, every game ends with a losing hand. Sometimes we remember that last hand and we forget about those hands that lead us to that point. Think about how many hands you won with the lower chance, and how that allowed you to end in better positions.

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Haha, I wish I could say that, but honestly my luck works way less than I’d like. 😂 I’m still waiting for those lucky hands to show up more often! ♠️

fundiver199 said:

Poker is a series of independent outcomes, so there is no such thing as being in "an unlucky period" or a "downswing". Every time we sit down to play a new game, its a completely clean sheet of paper, and it does not matter, what happened in the previous 1, 10, 100 or 1.000 games, we played. The mental challenge is to force ourselfes to remember this and just continue to implement the same winning strategy again and again, regardless what happened in recent games.

This is of course assuming, we have a winning strategy. If we continue to lose in specific games, then with time it becomes less and less likely, that this is only due to variance or "bad luck", and it becomes more and more likely, we are simply not beating that game. And then we need to either find another game, we can beat, or study and improve.

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exactly this ^

Amazingly there's a couple of streamers I've watched on occasion who are winning mid-stakes players & crazy thing is, they seem to believe they can be 'in' a downswing (like it's still going forward) and comments to the effect "I need to just keep going and eventually get past this run of negative variance". (and many other comments that would insinuate that they believe it is something that will continue in a cycle and they will have to keep playing during the bad portion of it in order to reach the other side). I was actually pretty shocked to hear it tbh.
Every card is a completely 'clean sheet'.

I always like this question because when people ask me questions on the luck or their bad luck, it almost always comes back to it's not about luck. A friend of mine once came over years ago. He was talking about how rigged online poker was, and he was here to prove to me why it was rigged. He came over and he showed me ten hands he had lost in a row, pocket aces. You know, I'm supposed to win 82% of the time, and yet I lost every single one of them. The first time I saw the hand, he shows me. He's, like, in the middle position, and he limps in. He goes to the flop six-way. I'm sitting here, like, okay. He bets big on the flop. He gets called. He gets raised. The flop was seven-eight-ten. That's pretty damn wet flop. That's an issue there. He jams. He lost to a straight. The next one, he's in the big blind. Five limpers in. He just checks his option. Same type of issue. Flop comes up. He bombs pot. Hey, look at the flop for a minute. You got so many people out there. Yeah, you can get paid, but nobody's going all in with third pair. By the time I was done, he had lost, I think, seven or eight of them in the same way. You know, when the flop is monotone, straighty, he would just keep bombing away, flop, turn, and river. That's not luck. That's where you're playing the hand wrong and badly. There's times you have to be able to fold aces, and the reason is it's just a pair. It doesn't beat anything other than a pair that's smaller. Any hand you look at, it's about the math of the game. You know, yeah, pocket aces are 82% against pretty much anything. Have you ever seen aces hit running to ace-ten? I ran the statistics after I lost the hand that day. I was 90% favorite. The thing is, you got to remember is one time in ten you're going to lose. Nothing's guaranteed. You know, pick ace-king. It always loses. It's not aces, guys. It's still one of the strongest hands, but if you don't flop an ace or a king, what are you beating? Especially if you're multi-way. I lost to, I don't know, six-four offsuit. Yeah, that's horrible. We don't deny it. I shouldn't have been into it. But if you look at the situation, how you played the hand all the way through, you should have been able to fold possibly. Most hands that you get in, even dominating hands, ace-king versus ace-queen, you do know you're going to lose about one time in three. Is there some luck in this game? Of course it is. Any hand, the probability of you running into the bad luck, the loss, that tenth time, guess what? It's bad luck that you lost, but it's not about luck. We have to expect to lose hands here and there like that. And yes, you get all in versus a joke hand, and you lose. I understand the frustration. Trust me, I get that. The thing is, isn't that what you want? He called me with seven-two offsuit. What a blanking idiot. Yeah, but what was your thoughts when he showed seven-two when you guys flipped over the cards? You're sitting there celebrating, I've got aces. Do you want him to only call you when he has aces? No. Sometimes they're going to get lucky too, and it is part of the math. It's the percentages. That's why I am asked, is poker a game of skill or luck? It is a game of skill. You need to use the skill to fold, and sometimes, yeah, you might fold the best hand. But when the play and the flop and everything else tells you you need to fold or should be concerned, it doesn't matter what your hand is if it's questionable at that point. Also, it's part of the reason why it's a long-term game. If you get in every time good, or at least almost good, you know, say you get into coin flips, you know, pairs versus overs. All right, sometimes you're going to beat the pair. Sometimes you're going to beat the overs. That's the only time we're going to say a losing hand at that point. But say you get in other times, you know, 55-45, 60-40. We're not talking about dominating here. You're still going to lose four out of six times. And yes, you may lose three or four times in a row. But just remember how many times you won three or four times in a row. If you played the same hands over two million times, you'll notice that the statistics come to about what it would be. That's why a game of poker is a game of skill. It's not about one individual hand. It's about long term.

In my case anyway, I haven't been lucky, I'm fighting with patience, skill, control my temper, at any moment the opportunity will come.