I replay that hand in my head, from time-to-time, and always pause at the moment when
the dealer taps the 7️⃣ table, right before she flips the river card up. I glance one more
time at the board: Kc Jc 8h 7️⃣ 5c.
“Ace, Queen, Ten, Club,” I hear my section of the rail
shouting.
It didn’t come.
It’s been a decade since the river 7️⃣ blanked off, but it still
feels like yesterday. I don’t compete in tournaments often, so I still haven’t got the
7️⃣ chance to rewrite that history with a different result.
The truth is, unless you grind
the circuit full time, play small 7️⃣ field high-rollers, or, frankly, are on the positive
side of variance more than your fair share, you may not either.
It’s 7️⃣ something I
understood conceptually as a professional, but until I lived it, I couldn’t fully grasp
the nature of tournaments, 7️⃣ and to a larger extent, poker in general.
It’s not just
winning your coin flips, where one experiences the luck. Variance 7️⃣ comes in many forms
in poker: You may get coolered with the second nuts to the nuts, or your opponent 7️⃣ may
draw out on you.
But variance also comes in hidden forms: a bad turn card that kills
your action; or 7️⃣ positional variance, such as getting aces under the gun instead of on
the button; or situational variance, by merely being 7️⃣ in the right place at the right
time to get into a great game, which earns you a fortune.
While these 7️⃣ things will, in
theory, even out over the long run, poker players, too often, don’t realize just how
long that 7️⃣ long run is. In the meantime, they go broke in the name of expectation, never
reaching the point where their 7️⃣ skill trumps the luck.
Just how long does it take?
In a
sentence, much longer than you think.
In tournament poker, evening out 7️⃣ the variance can
take a lifetime or two.
This explains the phenomenon of how the world’s best players
can go years 7️⃣ without winning a major event. Conversely, there will always be a
fortunate few who go on to win multiple events 7️⃣ in a short period of time.
Most people
will associate this hot streak solely with skill; when, in fact, luck was 7️⃣ the principle
contributor to someone winning on any given day.
This is not to say that all successful
tournament professionals are 7️⃣ merely benefactors of good fortune; some are truly
phenomenal players. But it’s important to remember that for every one superstar, 7️⃣ there
are likely 100 players of equal caliber who just haven’t caught the right breaks, never
won an event, and 7️⃣ thus never had the opportunity to further pursue their tournament
career.
This harsh reality doesn’t mean that winners are good, and 7️⃣ losers are bad, or
that there’s no skill for those who win. It just means that luck supersedes everything
else, 7️⃣ in the short term, which as you’ll see in a moment, isn’t all that short.
But
just when you want to 7️⃣ curse your fortune, blaming bad luck for your losses, remember
this one thing. Poker is unique in that it’s the 7️⃣ most competitively played game where
luck plays a significant factor in the final outcome (other sports have variance–the
best football 7️⃣ team doesn’t always win–but it’s much less significant than in
poker).
And thank God for it.
As Phil Hellmuth famously states, “If 7️⃣ there were no luck
involved, I’d win every time.” Some may question his assurance, but the implications of
his idea 7️⃣ are telling. No professional truly wishes there were less luck involved. If
there were, poker would be like chess and 7️⃣ the action would dry up.
You may be thinking
I’m exaggerating, and that luck really isn’t as big of a factor 7️⃣ as I make it out to be.
Well, let’s look at what the math says. I love numbers, because they 7️⃣ never lie.
Here is
a simple variance calculator program that I use to get a grip on just how profound the
7️⃣ role of luck is in poker tournaments.
