As of November 2021, the APT Forum is closed to new posts. Like with many online forums, usage has decreased in recent years. All previous posts are still available.
Overall luck
Perhaps the calculation of "overall luck" needs to change a bit. My "luck" with "two suited cards, went to river with flush or better" spiked up to 74% after a session in which that happened twice. However, one of those times the bots had flopped quads and the other time a full house.
I wouldn't consider those to be positive luck outcomes.
Sign In to comment.
Welcome
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Comments
Hi,
That's a good observation. Luck can be defined in almost any way you want to define it. For the purposes of that specific calculation, it is defined exactly as it is written - in terms of the cards you are dealt. There could be other definitions also. You clearly could also have measures of luck that dealt with opponent cards - for example, dealt KK vs AA (bad luck) or AA vs KK (good luck), or post-flop things like went to river flush or better with worst hand, vs. opponent going to river with flush or better, you with better hand.
That measure is mostly there just to give you an idea about the distribution of cards you are being dealt - it could also be changed to take into account opponent cards, draw outs against vs. you drawing out, etc. Those would also be interesting, and I think that would be possible. We'll have to write that down as something to consider. Thanks for reminding me about that. I know we've discussed it before and I don't remember why we ended up choosing the way we have it other than it being the "simplest" measure of luck.
Allen
Allen,
Thanks for the consideration. Yeah, that page has a weird mixture of stuff when it comes to luck. Part of it is predicated on just what your were dealt (premium hand, pocket pair, etc.) and part of it is predicted on what happens with the board (flopped two pair or better, flopped a set, made a flush, etc.). But none of it reflects what you opponent just happened to be holding and how that affects your bottom line.
FWIW - to me, "maximum luck" is holding the nuts at some point in a hand when my opponent holds the 2nd nuts (e.g., holding A-A preflop vs. K-K; or holding top set vs. opponent's middle set on a rainbow flop, etc.). Those are the situations in which "luck" is working maximally in your favor in terms of getting paid off - what we would call "running good." Then, of course, you need to figure in draws where you make the draw to catch up to win the hand as part of "running good." And all of the converse situations where you are "running bad."
Some characterization of that as "overall luck" would help us as players put our BB/100 results in better context.
Edit - I'd also like to have some characterization of this because "close situations" don't seem to come up equally balanced. That is, I seem to never:
etc.
whereas the bots seem to be on the winning end of such situations with regularity (like three times today I've already flopped two pair and been behind, one time behind to TWO bots - my bottom two pair vs. top and bottom two pair vs. a broadway straight). Or I could min raise with A-Ks, get reraised pre-flop, call, have the board come K-8-8, and get it all in with a check-raise on the flop against, of course, K-K. sigh
But somehow when that happens I'm apparently an idiot because I get an IQ score in the 80s and it tells me 80+% of the site's players would seen such a trainwreck coming and would have played those situations better. ---> eye roll
But, hey, my consolation is that my "luck" is 49.17%. :-)
I think that what APT is trying to reflect is, as an example, how often do you actually get a big pocket pair vs how often mathematically should you get a big pocket pair. It would be nice to know how often do you get KK when the opponent has AA vs how often should that happen.
Right, that's exactly what this is showing.
As far as the bad luck mentioned my MAM4 - I have never met a poker player who thinks he or she has good luck - which was part of the reason why we did the luck measure in the first place, to show whether it is real or imagined. I personally remember my bad beats (several really bad ones in partucular), a lot more than any lucky wins. In fact, off the top of my head i cant name any really lucky wins, bit i can think of three horrible beats that give me nightmares. My guess is that you only remember the beats and not the wins because that is how the human brain works.
However, the alternative to that is that the bots are better at reading you and getting away from 2nd best hands, so you don't see it when it happens. That is also something that is true - better players appear luckier because they keep themselves out of 2nd best hand situations and you don't see the cards when it happens. In the long run, the cards work out on average.
Allen, thanks for the laugh (never met a poker player who thinks s/he has good luck).
I have admit that when I saw that I was getting hands in about the frequency that probability would predict, I was surprised (I just "knew", that I wasn't running well).
Allen,
Thanks. I do understand the concept of "selective memory."
However, I don't see how the type of "close" situations I note above are ones you can really avoid as a poker player - even a bot. They simply happen, or they should happen, with some statistical frequency.
That's why I'd recommend actually having a tabulation of how often, or not, these various circumstances occur to capture the notion of "luck."
Just knowing that I got A-A a statistically correct number of times doesn't really tell me much. Knowing that I got A-A and got them cracked three times in a row by flopped sets, and two other times raised pre-flop and got no callers, over 1000+ hands would tell me more about how my "luck" has been.
I presume you know this, but for others reading who might not, we already have several tools that give you the capability to see the info you are looking for related to specific hands and create comparisons you want to make.
Using the AA example, there are two things I would recommend doing if you want to see how you really are doing with it (and remember, you have to look at everything - just seeing you have been unlucky with AA doesn't mean you haven't been lucky with KK, etc.)
Go to the Reports and History tab, and select My Reports. From there, select Performance->Hands. You can see your stats with AA or any of the other hands. If you hover over AA, you can also can replay those hands, as well as see how your performance on the hand compares to others.
Go to the Reports and History tab and select My Saved Hands. In there, you have tons of filtering options (including looking for specific hands, profitable hands, etc). The last filtering option is to type in a specific hand. If you type in AA, you can see a listing of all the hands you ever played where you were dealt AA.
There also is a way you can create your own stats for almost anything:
When you are playing, use the hand tag feature which shows up right above your name after each hand. As you are playing, if you lose with a certain hand, tag it with a code you make up (e.g., river loss trips or better or river win vs trips or better). Others you might want to tag would be "bad beat" vs. "lucky draw". In a sense, you can create your own custom stats for whatever you want to keep track of.
I'm remembering why we defined luck the way we did - it is just too hard to classify things objectively, and a person's pre-flop and post-flop play influences the situations they get into - in other words it isn't really objectively luck. Once you bring the opponent into it, there are too many variables moving around. Many of these events are also rare enough that it would be hard to objectively say someone was being lucky.
I was not aware of the 2 types of reports that you mentioned. Thank you for making me aware to them.
Allen, I think the hand reports really tell the most pertinent story in the long run. The objective, at least in my mind, is to maximize the profit I realize from my "good luck" and minimize the losses I suffer from my "bad luck." So I look at it this way. The "luck" factor is how many times I get aces out of how many times I should get aces in a random distribution. What I do with the aces, in the long term, is where skill comes into the equation. And that is reflected in the hand report.