Re: Luck and

On Jan 15, 1:03 pm, "Dave the Clueless" <fract...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jan 15 2008 12:56 PM, Gary Carson wrote:







There is no long run in the context of poker results.

Convergence requires a sequence of independent, identically distributed
random
variables (or or a mixture of sequences).  Everytime a player leaves and a
new
player sits down the probability distribution of your results will change.
You
end up with a mixture of very short sample paths from distributions that are
randomly chosen.  

The technical statistical term for this is "it's a fucking mess".
There probably are ways to model this, but I dont' know what they are, and
you
aren't going to find them by thinking in terms of the long run.

The statistical terms that have some relevance are fat-tails, skewed,
non-stationary, large deviations, and similar concepts.

Gary Carson
http://www.garycarson.com

I think that you just made my point for me. There is no "long run" even
distribution of luck (cards), you won't have "the same good cards and bad
cards as everyone else". The assumption that everyone will have the same
"luck" over the "long term" is in my opinion a flawed premise. Although
without it I guess it would be harder to sell poker books.

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Well, no, I didn't make your point for you. At least not if I
understand your point.

It sounds like you're saying that it's all luck.

I'm saying that there's no long run.

The two statements are not the same thing.

Poker skill is about putting yourself in a position to get lucky. It
has nothing at all to do with a long run.

Lack of a long run simply translates into the futility of trying to
use history to predict the future. There's not reason to expect the
future to look like the past if there's no long run, so don't even
try. Standard statistical measures that depend on convergence have
very little information content, so don't rely on them.

Everyone will not have the same luck. But that's true whether there's
a long run or not. The significance of a long run isn't that everyone
has the same luck, it's that it doesn't matter whether or not everyone
has the same luck in the long run.

Since there is no long run it does actually matter whether or not
you're lucky. But you do have some degree of control of the
probability of whether or not you get lucky.
.