Beginner's Luck
Our local paper's poker columnist posited a question my direction this week about "beginner's luck" in poker. I wrote the following in response, and thought it was worth posting here as well:
In my opinion - a big part of "beginner's luck" is that people on the "bad beat" side just don't understand the math.
Pocket aces are "only" a 80% - 20% favorite over any smaller pocket pair. Say you're playing a no-limit tournament, and you get all your money in the middle three consecutive hands in a row with aces and are called by any smaller pair, what are your odds of winning all three hands? Eight out of ten, right? Wrong - way wrong.
When you're talking about these three hands in a series, and talking about the odds of winning them all, you're basically betting in the sports world what's known as a parlay - you've got to win all three hands, or else you lose all your money.
While you're an 80% favorite to win each hand individually, when you look at the three hands together, the math is a little different: you take the probability of winning each hand, and multiply that by the probability of winning the next. Which means 80% * 80% * 80%, which results in a final probablity of you winning all three hands at just 51%. Yeah, that's a coinflip.
Its the same on any given hand even in limit poker. People tend to overestimate the strength of their hands against multiple opponents: If you're playing 3-6 at the casino and a minimum of five people are seeing every flop, you're going to be an underdog EVERY HAND (someone else at the table is going to win more often than you do), even with aces - pocket aces are about 49% to win against four opponents with purely random hands, and slightly worse if you give your opponents slightly better hands than pure random.
So if you're playing against several new players who are playing every hand and taking them way too far, they (the new players collectively) are going to win a lot of those hands. When there are several of these new players in every pot - somone's going to win every pot, and its not going to be you (the experienced player) every time even though you've got the best starting hand...
And on a third level, a lot of the time i believe people don't understand the math of even two hands going up against each other heads up. Even though a lot of people have seen the numbers flash during the WPT broadcasts, people seem to forget (or conveniently ignore) that certain hands aren't really that big of favorites over another especially if you're seeing all five cards. Your pocket pair is only a 55%-45% favorite against any two overcards (if you raise with 99 and are called by JKo for example). Vice-versa Ace-King looks really good preflop but its still an underdog to a measly pair of deuces. Not to mention edges like Ace-Ten being only a 65-35 favorite over a hand like Jack-Three offsuit or 6-4 offsuit. Ace King unsuited is "only" a 2-1 favorite (67%-33%) over a measly seven-two offsuit.
Yeah, over time that 65-35 edge is going to mean that you're going to win almost two dollars for every dollar your opponent does - but thats over thousands and thousands of hands. 65-35 isn't that big of an edge, and the 35% side of that hand is going to come through a lot more than a lot of people seem to think (more than one hand out of three) by their cries of "Bad beat" or "Beginner's Luck!" if you will...
Your profits in poker come from pushing small edges. Those people who are seeing every flop lose over the long term because they can't outrun the rake and they can't depend on luck to carry them forever.
We as winning poker players need to always keep in mind that every cent of our profit comes from our opponents mistakes - and while its frustrating to see somone call a three-bet preflop with a trash hand and hit two pair to crack your kings, that opponent is making a mistake according to the Fundamental Theorm of Poker and they're going to pay you off long term. if your opponents weren't making mistakes and everyone was Playing Perfect Poker, then we'd just be shuffling money around according to the random distribution of the cards, and we'd all be losing money (no one could outrun the rake).
In my opinion - a big part of "beginner's luck" is that people on the "bad beat" side just don't understand the math.
Pocket aces are "only" a 80% - 20% favorite over any smaller pocket pair. Say you're playing a no-limit tournament, and you get all your money in the middle three consecutive hands in a row with aces and are called by any smaller pair, what are your odds of winning all three hands? Eight out of ten, right? Wrong - way wrong.
When you're talking about these three hands in a series, and talking about the odds of winning them all, you're basically betting in the sports world what's known as a parlay - you've got to win all three hands, or else you lose all your money.
While you're an 80% favorite to win each hand individually, when you look at the three hands together, the math is a little different: you take the probability of winning each hand, and multiply that by the probability of winning the next. Which means 80% * 80% * 80%, which results in a final probablity of you winning all three hands at just 51%. Yeah, that's a coinflip.
Its the same on any given hand even in limit poker. People tend to overestimate the strength of their hands against multiple opponents: If you're playing 3-6 at the casino and a minimum of five people are seeing every flop, you're going to be an underdog EVERY HAND (someone else at the table is going to win more often than you do), even with aces - pocket aces are about 49% to win against four opponents with purely random hands, and slightly worse if you give your opponents slightly better hands than pure random.
So if you're playing against several new players who are playing every hand and taking them way too far, they (the new players collectively) are going to win a lot of those hands. When there are several of these new players in every pot - somone's going to win every pot, and its not going to be you (the experienced player) every time even though you've got the best starting hand...
And on a third level, a lot of the time i believe people don't understand the math of even two hands going up against each other heads up. Even though a lot of people have seen the numbers flash during the WPT broadcasts, people seem to forget (or conveniently ignore) that certain hands aren't really that big of favorites over another especially if you're seeing all five cards. Your pocket pair is only a 55%-45% favorite against any two overcards (if you raise with 99 and are called by JKo for example). Vice-versa Ace-King looks really good preflop but its still an underdog to a measly pair of deuces. Not to mention edges like Ace-Ten being only a 65-35 favorite over a hand like Jack-Three offsuit or 6-4 offsuit. Ace King unsuited is "only" a 2-1 favorite (67%-33%) over a measly seven-two offsuit.
Yeah, over time that 65-35 edge is going to mean that you're going to win almost two dollars for every dollar your opponent does - but thats over thousands and thousands of hands. 65-35 isn't that big of an edge, and the 35% side of that hand is going to come through a lot more than a lot of people seem to think (more than one hand out of three) by their cries of "Bad beat" or "Beginner's Luck!" if you will...
Your profits in poker come from pushing small edges. Those people who are seeing every flop lose over the long term because they can't outrun the rake and they can't depend on luck to carry them forever.
We as winning poker players need to always keep in mind that every cent of our profit comes from our opponents mistakes - and while its frustrating to see somone call a three-bet preflop with a trash hand and hit two pair to crack your kings, that opponent is making a mistake according to the Fundamental Theorm of Poker and they're going to pay you off long term. if your opponents weren't making mistakes and everyone was Playing Perfect Poker, then we'd just be shuffling money around according to the random distribution of the cards, and we'd all be losing money (no one could outrun the rake).
posted by Performify at 4:10 PM
1 Comments:
Poker is really interesting indeed. I used to do a lot of that myself, playing tournaments and such on http://www.pokeryap.com ..
"While you're an 80% favorite to win each hand individually, when you look at the three hands together, the math is a little different: you take the probability of winning each hand, and multiply that by the probability of winning the next. Which means 80% * 80% * 80%, which results in a final probablity of you winning all three hands of just 51%. Yeah, that's a coinflip. "
Didn't know that part..
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