Who Needs Luck?

Things you will learn:

• Why it pays to take a long term view when you're playing poker
• How not to get frustrated by short term disappointment

They say that poker is gambling. They say it's game of both luck and skill, like blackjack and craps. Because the cards are shuffled at the start of each hand, the game must be gambling, right?

Except we know differently. As poker devotees we know that skill beats luck. Some have the bankrolls to prove it, which the rest of us aspire to have. We invest serious portions of our life on the sacred belief that good players will take bad players' money. Those at the top of the game have greater skill and, if we work hard and improve our skill, we can get there. We believe this is a game of skill and we need to be right.

Poker is almost unique in its blend of luck and skill. If you were to play a heads-up match against the best player in the world and move all-in every hand, you'd have almost a 40% chance of winning! That's some luck factor.

What people outside the game don't understand is that even the best players lose roughly once every three sessions. Our old friend 'the long run' is what counts. A single hand, a single game or even a single month of results are not relevant to the skilled poker player. He knows that if he's playing with an edge, if he has greater skill than his opponents and plays at his best, he must eventually get the money.

Very few people can deal with poker's swings because very few people can accept the idea that failing is part of the process.

In poker luck manifests itself every session we play. There are very few situations in which we are a 100% lock to win the pot. It's important to fully embrace this to win at the game. Let's say you're an 80% favourite in a hand. That means that one in five times you'll lose that match-up.

But you shouldn't care, you really shouldn't. Because every time you're in that situation you're making money. Perhaps this is hardest of all to grasp for new players.

You make money every time you have a mathematical edge, regardless of whether you win or lose that specific time.

The winners in poker know this. If you're doing the right things consistently, results will come your way.

So, we know that luck evens out in the long term. The only problem? The 'long term' can be very, very long.

Until you've played a lot of poker and experienced the wrong end of variance (and a hideously long run of losses) you won't appreciate what a fickle mistress poker can be. Poker writer Lou Krieger once ran a simulation of three million poker hands between equally matched players playing $20/$40 Limit poker. At the end of the exercise one player was up $65,000, and one down over $35,000. The simulation equates to 50 years of live play.

• First, we need to always play with an edge. That means being better than our opponents
• Second, we use bankroll management. If you're not careful, statistical variance (and lucky opponents hitting their kicker on the river) can wipe you out. The length of the long run is why you need to play even lower stakes in relation to your bankroll than you think

Over the long-term playing with an edge is a winning proposition. Why? Variance is far more than a statistical concept or a way for poker players to explain what went wrong in a losing session. Variance actually explains how you can lose hands in poker but still be making money when you do.

• Here's a simple betting proposition as an example. Let's say we bet on the roll of a die. Half the sides of the die are red and half are blue, so it's a 50/50. If we bet $1 a roll and you and you take red and I take blue (with all bets paid at even money), over 10 rolls who will win? The answer is, we don't know, but variance will decide. Or, if you prefer, luck
• What's clear is neither of us has an edge and if we played forever we would theoretically end up even. But over just 10 rolls one of us will get lucky. Now let's change the proposition. We'll use a different die. This one has four red sides and two blue sides. We'll play again and you still have red. Now four times out of every six you win while two times out of every six I do. We'll play over 10 rolls again. This time who will win? Again, we don't know, but this time you're the favourite although it's possible for me, over a short game, to buck the odds
• If I did 'get lucky' and win our game, would you play again at stakes you could afford? I hope you would, and I hope if I won again, you'd play again and again. Because you're playing with an edge and 'in the long run' you must win. The fact is that just by playing the second game you're making money because you have an edge, but that doesn't mean you'll win a specific game
• In fact, you must lose some rolls and even some games, because you have an edge, not a complete lock, so for the maths to play out you must lose sometimes