Luck In Poker

The Luck Factor

If you were to ask 100 pro poker players, "how much is poker about luck?", you would most likely get differing answers from the majority of them, this is because nobody actually knows how to calculate the effect luck has due to there being so many imponderables and variables involved.

Although nobody knows how great an effect luck really has, many people are branded as lucky players and for different reasons. A good player might be branded as lucky because "your pocket aces always hold up" or "you get dealt so many big pocket pairs", when infact the reality is simply that the player knows how to play pocket aces well and therefore gets outdrawn much less frequently than someone who likes to be 'tricky' or 'trappy' with their big hands. A good player is usually ahead in the hand too, meaning they win a higher percentage of the time making them look even luckier.

A bad player definitely gets luckier more often, but not enough that their luck translates to profit, bad players put themselves in positions to get lucky more regularly than good players, and the way they get 'lucky' is by outdrawing with the worst hand. It's clear that before asking questions about luck, we must first define what constitutes as luck because not everyone thinks the same way.

Over the entirety of a long poker career, luck can be discounted somewhat and instead only thought of as percentages; when you win 81% of the time, you will lose or tie 19% of the time. The more you play, the less these percentages deviate from their true statistical probability; this means if you have a short poker career, your results will be influenced by luck much more than if your poker career was considerably longer.

So basically, poker is a game of skill, in the short term there may be luck but in the long run, the percentages will be the most important factor. That said, it is possible to make your own luck, although this may not be luck in the truest sense, but you will certainly look lucky to your opponents because you consistently put yourself in more advantageous positions so you are constantly getting the best of it. Getting 'lucky' through outdrawing people without a care for pot odds is'nt really lucky at all because you will end up losing more money than you win.