Is luck just probability?

Running Bing

In the last thread cianos brought up an interesting point that he believes theres more that influences luck than the laws of probability. When I play poker I usually play in two hour blocks i.e. I'll play for two hours take a break and then play two more. I've noticed that some days it just happens for me I get great cards the flop hits me all the time etc. and other days its just horrible bad hole cards, flops not hitting and bad beats galore. what I've noticed is its always either a good day where im getting the luck or a bad day where im getting no luck. it never happens that i'll have bad luck for two hours then go back and be getting good luck ( note: I'd class myself as a disciplined player. in fact I think one of my main strenghts is to be able to play pretty much the same wheter im winning or losing so I doubt that has anything to do with it).


my questions are do you belive that theres more to luck than the laws of probability.also experts say that you should never set a stop loss limit. if you are losing by a lot you should stay in the game as long as its a good game and your play is not suffering i.e. your not tilting. however do you believe that on days where your just not getting the rub of the green you should just quit before you do anymore damage or should you keep playing in hope that your luck will change.

I find that if im getting bad luck by staying in the game it usually just makes things worse. I dont set a stop loss limit but I'll usually quit if nothings going right for me.


sorry about the long post and note im a limit player so this might be a bit different for nl.

BrendanB

There's no inbuilt correcting statistical imbalances mechanism in the world. Things just tend to the average as n->oo. This always wrecks peoples head, as in: I should get the average, therefore if I've gotten no pairs of aces then I'm due a run, or, this is a bad day ... etc.

Your odds of getting a pair of aces is 220/1 (4/52 * 3/51). Another way of putting this is that in the course of about 150 hands you will get at least one pair of aces about half of the time (binomial distribution stuff). That's true for any given set of a 150 hands. One in ten you'll get more than 1 pair of aces in that session. But all this has absolutely no bearing on the rest of your session, the odds of getting it on the next hand is still exactly 220 to 1.

I don't believe anyone doesn't go on tilt to some extent under some conditions, so I think stop losses are sometimes a good idea, but not for good session bad session reasons.

Running Bing

"But all this has absolutely no bearing on the rest of your session, the odds of getting it on the next hand is still exactly 220 to 1."

thats the point im making. I know that accordind to the laws of probability each hand has no bearing on the rest of the session as their statistically independent events however do you believe there is more at work than the laws of probability?

Cianos

WARNING: I may start rambling here!

This is a subject I have only ever had glimpses of thought on, therefore nothing below is my absolute opinion, or even properly thought out.

Through playing poker I have come to notice that what we experience as "luck" may be effected by more than probability. I dont know what it is that effects it, but one possible theory is that through our experience of the outside world, our psychological state can effect what "path" of reality we branch off in.

In the same sense as fractals; (http://classes.yale.edu/Fractals/FracTrees/welcome.html), supposing that it was true that every possible version of reality was ready to be experienced. That no matter what could happen, is waiting to happen and it is the path along these possiblities that we take that constructs what we experience as reality.

Maybe to experience whatever path of reality we follow, we are constantly making choices (for want of a better word) - or reverse choices, on a subconcious level that when combined construct what we view as reality.

henbane

hippy!

DeVore

Babybing wrote:

"But all this has absolutely no bearing on the rest of your session, the odds of getting it on the next hand is still exactly 220 to 1."

thats the point im making. I know that accordind to the laws of probability each hand has no bearing on the rest of the session as their statistically independent events however do you believe there is more at work than the laws of probability?

No.


DeV.

Cianos

DeVore wrote:

No.


DeV.

Dont know why your so quick to dismiss it. You may want to have a look at these.

http://www.datadiwan.de/SciMedNet/library/articlesN71+/N71time_Dressler.htm

http://paranormal.se/topic/pk-experiment_med_djur.html

http://demo.cs.brandeis.edu/pr/ee/summary.html