Re: Some people ARE CONSISTENTLY LUCKIER than others.

On Mar 1 2006 2:42 PM, da pickle wrote:

"RedKnave"

I think this is the kind of discourse, in large part, that I was thinking
about. But still, I think it does avoid, to some extent, the premise that
mathematics predicts that some people will be consistently unluckier than
others. If this is assumed, then the issue is not necessarily one of
streaks, per se. I'm probably being a bit (or more than a bit) dense
here, but isn't it possible that there is some piece of this that can be
discussed beyond the simple recognition that past events are not
predictive of future (in cards)?


I think it is a semantics problem. What do you mean when you say "luck"? (I
intentionally put the ? outside the quotation marks to appease Ian and I
used the "luck" to frustrate Will.)

When you say lucky or unlucky, you are presuming a one dimensional
definition of the word luck. One can have, in many people's minds, good
luck and bad luck. So that implies that luck can mean both sides of the
distribution of normal results. So, I think that another word might be
better than this luck word, because it seems to not define what you are
talking about.

Mathematics and statistics might show that there is a distribution of
results and it is people that define the periods of one side of that
distribution or the other as being either having good luck or bad luck.
(Often people use only the word lucky to mean good luck and unlucky to mean
bad luck. This complicates the discussion even further.)

What word would be better than "luck" in saying what we might mean in this
area?

Could be a semantics issue. Maybe I'm not accurately interpretting, or
understanding, Gary Carson's statement that, "Mathematics predicts that
some people will be consistently luckier than others." I don't usually
think of him as making meaningless statements. If there is any truth in
his statement, however, then it seems we must consider that the inverse
must be true, and that, while past cards aren't predictive of future cards
in the short term, it may be that a particular individual may overall get
consistently bad cards, bad flops, or bad beats.

I hesitate to give a personal example, but... I just got another AK
(happened to be off-suit, but that's not too important for the moment.)
Of the last 28 times I have gotten AK (s or o), only once have I gotten an
A or K on the flop, and only one other time did it improve by the river
(of the hands where I able to stay to the river.) I don't know whether
this classifies as bad luck, but I'm fairly certain the fact that I've
lost the majority of those hands doesn't make me a bad player.

I really don't know where any of this goes, though. Probably nowhere, as
Will said. I was just going off Gary's comment and it seemed like an
interesting exercise, with maybe a kernal or two for those who are,
mathematically, consistently unluckier than others.

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