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