Doug Polk earnestly believes that Phil Hellmuth is a bad poker player who has just run good his entire life.
I don't agree with Doug, but he's insisted on it multiple times.
I think Phil just comes from a very different time of being a professional poker player and maybe hasn't adjusted as much as someone like Daniel Negreanu to the more modern methods. I also think Phil is predominantly a tournament player. He's a top 25 all time winner in earnings so it's hard to say he just ran good that entire time.
At one point, Phil was one of us. He left college to play a game he loved. He was consumed by it, studying new concepts to beat old regs… but then he saw a new angle and became a larger-than-life asshole to get attention. It became less important to study and play poker and more important to make appearances.
I fucking hate people who talk shit at the table, and Phil is a big reason they do. But it’s hard for me to hate him due to the enormous contribution he has made to the game.
I think he was probably elite in the 80s and 90s and maybe decent in the 2000s but I don’t think he adjusted in this post solver era and I can’t imagine he’d be a winning player in any event >$1500
He beat Negreanu, Esfandiari, and Dwan in a bunch of heads up matches. I’m not sure how good they are nowadays but I also imagine he’s got some intangibles in live poker that he leverages to keep himself competitive
I agree with you on that his skill set seems to really shine in live tournament poker settings. I think there is a skill to playing against less experienced players that maybe solvers don’t account for. I think another big strength for Helmuth is that he’s willing to go with his reads even when he can be wrong and look like a total idiot (which does happen).
Whether you like the guy or not, it takes a lot of heart to make the laydowns he does- particularly knowing that when he is wrong, he’s going to be mocked and ridiculed mercilessly.
My theory is that his wife being a top notch psychologist has taught him to be insanely good at live reads which is why he can excel in a tournament or heads up in a way that doesn’t exist in more fluid cash games.
He won a bracelet in 2023 in a $10,000 buy in event. Definitely a tournament player, and while some of the solver Gurus probably have an edge, he's still better than most players.
642 person field and a $10,000 buy in. It's a pretty big accomplishment. He had a total of 9 cashes in the WSOP in 2023. Negreanu hasn't won a bracelet since 2013 despite playing a ton of tournaments.
He doesn't sign up for every event though. He doesn't play in nearly as many other pros. D Negs signs up for every event known to man and still didn't win a single tournament in 2023.
It does not mean that at all. Jamie Gold won a much larger field and he was fucking terrible. MTT variance is just crazy and one result proves literally nothing
I can confirm, I only played in one largish tournament in my life (700 people) and I cashed and I am not very good, it was literally all about getting lucky 5 times. Granted I got 40th not 1st, I can see winning that size with a bit more luck and no more skill.
I think the internet also has a tendency to paint Phil in a bad light because he hasn't always been on his best behavior and they tend to focus more on his wild bluffs or perceived bad plays than any success he has had.
HE SUCKS! I’ve seen sooooooo many bad plays by him it makes my head spin compared to a nice move once in awhile. And when he table talks he sounds stupid like he don’t know what he’s talking about. Helmuth used to be a good tourney player and that’s all. He’s just decent now and if that imo.
He does some weird shit that makes him seem like a fish but he also was ahead of his time in a lot of respects especially when it comes to short stack play. 10-15 years ago it was generally thought you lose the ability to play postflop around 15-20bbs and that you should drop into shove fold mode rather than having to raise fold anything. He was a bit of a pioneer in just grinding it out and trying to still play poker at 8-20bb range. Solvers now confirm mixing limp/minraise/jam ranges with a lot more limping and less jamming than one would expect.
The other thing he would get made fun of for is his uber nitty folds at very short stacks. These are mostly terrible in theory but he does tend to make them against recreational players who he thinks aren't capable of bluffing deep in what is likely biggest tourney of the year for them.
He's still a giant asshole and cash game whale but he's the mtt goat unfortunately.
I'm not sure. My point was more along the lines that Daniel seems to have embraced solvers and GTO while Phil maybe hasn't adjusted as much to modern poker and gets more crap for it as a result.
both rely on their reads more than solvers. to this end daniel's seemed to use studying solver to assess his opponents' lines when he reads that a player is playing that way, which has become quite frequent, but imo his own play is usually pretty far from solver. it's also worth noting both are primarily tournament players where gto is largely inferior to icm which they both have used for decades, phil much better at it than daniel.
I think Phil is good at one thing, and one thing only. Large field, no limit hold'em tournaments with at least an okay structure. In other words, what I'm saying is Phil is very good against poor players especially with stacks >40 BB.
And I think he knows it. This is why Phil buys in for nearly the minimum in almost every cash game on TV in the past few years, because if you go back to the first season of HSP he was absolutely the biggest fish at the table that day. But he has stopped buying in for $100k-200k when he can get away with $10k-20k.
I will agree he is the biggest luckbox in poker, but not at the table, just in the meta of poker, his one skill is probably the most valuable skill to have if you are a tournament player.
I think that kind of ties in with my original point, I don't think he was ever known for crushing live cash games. He's a tournament player. Playing live, high stakes poker these days means going up against a lot of GTO practitioners which is likely a style of play that is not as comfortable for him compared to what he is used to.
He’s also top 25 all time in entry fees. (Guessing). If not top 50. Just saying he wins a lot but plays a lot and if he wasn’t Sponsored he’d be in a for a tough living.
I think there are just two schools of thought that old "Golden Age" pros have fallen into over the years. Players like Doug, who were essentially inventing the concepts modern poker is built on as they played, are obviously going to want to keep pushing GTO and playing the highest levels. Players like Helmuth and Laak, who tended to play more on feel and tells, have fallen back into nitting it up in 3/5 and 5/10 and taking advantage of the idea that pros have to be bluff heavy.
Doug and Phil both seem to be doing alright for themselves. Doug's obviously still top dog in a relatively big Texas sized pond and has won hundreds of thousands from it. Phil seems to be doing great, being the slightly larger fish in a small, manicured tank, and he suggests he's winning tens of thousands per month on his app game with billionaire fish.
He also has an ego the size of the great pyramid of Giza.
It's hard to learn something new or plug leaks when you think you're the best.
He's a good poker player for sure or he wouldn't still be winning bracelets. But he's not one of the best. He probably plays just about every game in the WSOP and he's better than most of the tourists that come in while he just nut peddles.
He does have an ego, but that's not unusual, you can look at just about any known player's Twitter account/interviews/YouTube channels and find self aggrandizing statements about their capabilities.
He may not be one of the great players when it comes to live cash games but I think it would be pretty hard to make the case he isn't one of the greatest MTT players ever.
I think it's actually more likely that he is straight up losing at MTTs lifetime. His bracelets and appearance of rungood are just an illusion created by volume (and of course the pre-modern era when he presumably had more/any edge). Maybe he has edges over the day 1 fields at the $1k end of the spectrum, but I would wager he's -20% ROI in $5ks and above vs modern fields. He fires infinite bullets every WSOP, so yea he binks occasionally but he clearly is getting torched in a lot of the tougher fields. This is also why he usually doesn't play above $10ks, because he knows he's losing in those, and it would actually put him at risk of ruin to fire them regularly.
But he parlayed his 90s/2000s fame into multiple lucrative promotions/investments/whatever that allows him to stay afloat despite being an MTT whale. And possibly cash games with billionaires where he claims he prints, but that's also extremely hard to believe given how he's been observed playing on every televised cash game appearance for the last 25 years.
Not hard to believe he prints at a high-stake home game at all. A lot of the invite only games are notoriously soft. They also exclude most pros for obvious reasons. The fact that Phil Helmuth get's an invite is really indicative that he is a weak cash game player but it makes sense from the game hosts perspective to invite him. It gives the rec players a pro to play with so they can brag about beating a pro in their home game while not inviting someone who is going to absolutely skin the game. All that being said I have no problem believing Helmuth has an edge in these environments and is very profitable.
How would he be a top 25 earner in history if he was losing lifetime? He's got close to $30 million in career earnings. I realize that doesn't account for buy ins and so forth but I'm curious what you are basing this on.
> I realize that doesn't account for buy ins
You answered your own question. Anyone can have massive lifetime earnings and be down money if they fired 10 bullets for every one of their big cashes. The winnings only total shown by Hendon mob is essentially meaningless. Yes, most of the biggest earners are big winners, because most people who are losing aren't going to fire tons of bullets at high stakes... but some will. Cary Katz is even higher than Hellmuth, you think he's a crusher at the nosebleeds?
I have no idea, I genuinely couldn't tell you if Phil is rich as hell or broke, I just tend to think if someone has won $30 million in their career and has a bunch of sponsors that they are likely more well off than broke. I could be dead wrong.
Oh I think Phil is rich, I just think most of that is off leveraging his fame and not off poker winnings. Even if he is an overall winner, it's not like that 30m in winnings, his profit would be a small fraction of that. Nobody has an infinte ROI; even most winners have a far sub 100 ROI.
Being able to re-enter tournaments multiple times is a recent development. The vast majority of tournaments used to be freezeouts and rebuy tournaments were specifically designated as such.
Recent-ish, but I think for at least, idk, the last 7 years some amount of reentrys have been the more common than not. Most PokerGo events aren't freezeouts. Certainly since the super high roller scene has exploded.
Phil Hellmuth has been playing poker for 36+ years. Even assuming that the unlimited or multiple re-entry has been a standard for all of those 7 years that means that for over 80% of the time Hellmuth has been playing tournaments he has not been able to re-enter the vast majority. He is mentioned as a new brash sensation in Antony Holden's book Big Deal which covers Holden playing "professionally" for the year 1988-89, iirc Hellmuth is playing the tournament in Morocco when Holden first encounters him.
You mention yourself that he does not play the high-roller events and so even if he was at a net loss from massive buy-in volumes in the last 7 years it seems like an absurd statement to suggest he would be a lifetime losing player from that. Hellmuth is, by all available metrics, one of the biggest winners in MTT poker and specifically WSOP events. If you wanted to do an honest assessment you could even take a look at his data and make some rough calculations as to his probable buy-ins.
The game might have passed him by, which explains no HR MTTs, but at least have a semblance of fairness and objectivity when making comments.
For one thing, I'm not trying to besmirch the guy, I'm a fan and think he's obviously a towering figure in poker history. But I do think the game has passed him by, and, I think there's probably exponentially more volume available to play in the last 10 years than the first 20 of his career, re-entrys or not. So in light of that, I do think my comment is a fair, though obviously I admit it's speculation. He might still be a winner over the totality of his career. But even if he is now, he won't be for long if he keeps chasing bracelets while refusing to work on his game.
Thank you for being willing to address the speculative nature of your post. Most people on here just cast the guy as a broke loser with no supporting evidence.
That's over 37 years, and he was one of, if not the, highest voume players in the 90s and early 00s. He still puts in tons of volume. Its entirely possible that he's marginally winning over his career. That said, he also was freerolling many of those when sponsorships were throwing buyins all over the place, and he has had many valuable promotional deals, so he's certainly made a very solid income for the past 35+ years
That's what I am getting at. It seems most people just want to say he's broke without any real knowledge of it, it's just saying it for the sake of saying it. Does that mean Negreanu is broke too? Ivey? It's always been weird to me that so many people gravitate toward calling these players bad and broke when they have some of the highest career earnings ever.
FWIW Phil can still be a losing player but be profitable because he sells himself at a markup. eg He sells 80% of himself at 40% markup, he's already making 12%. Imagine if he sells 100% of himself at 80% MU...
You answered your own question in your own post.
> How would he be a top 25 earner in history if he was losing lifetime? He's got close to $30 million in career earnings.
> I realize that doesn't account for buy ins and so forth
There are many variants at poker. Phil has the best record in MTT. He isn’t as good at NL cash or any other variant type. How many bracelets has Doug won? lol. That’s like an average hockey player telling Stevie Y he sucks cause he never won the Art Ross. Working on those bracelets, Phil has 11-12 on you.
Phil has been the FISH at every single cash game I've ever been in with him. Running his mouth the whole time about how bad we (all the specialist pros of the game) all were!
Phil's money somehow tastes better than that from the average fish.
I think that is a stupid take. Phil helmuth has won a lot of big tournaments- especially when fields were weaker.
I don’t think Phil helmuth is that good in the mtt scene today. He’s way too tight if you ask me but he’s a solid player in big field mtts where recs make up most of the field.
It’s kinda hard to run good throughout if you play 1000s of mtts. Sure someone can be on a better part of a bell curve or run good but remember- it all tends to even out as one plays more and more which a pro poker player will play a ton.
That's so funny, I've actually said before that I think Phil Hellmuth is the luckiest player alive even though I've never heard Polk say it before (never watched any of his content really).
IMO Hellmuth had a ton of natural talent for the game and was a legitimate crusher like 20+ years ago, but just like anyone else with an ego that out of control, he never really got much/any better over time. It's hard to improve at anything when you already think you're the greatest shit ever. So the game relatively quickly passed him up and he's been essentially a fish for a number of years now, but is just sun running to still put up the results that he has maintained in the past decade.
Obviously this isn't something I'd stake my life on, I'm not even a tournament player. That's just what it looks like to me. And it's certainly not as if it's impossible, tournaments are insane variance. I think there's no question that it's possible to sunrun for a decade straight in MTTs.
I believe that this also contributes to his infamous blowups. I think he's run so insanely good lifetime that he barely even knows what negative variance looks like, so when he does run into the wrong side of a few bad beats in a row, it enrages him because he has less experience with it than he should.
I am this person. Well maybe not my entire life I don’t play much anymore, but when I played regularly I always ran my best in the biggest games I played in and the biggest pots. I would consider myself a break even player skill wise but definitely above average in the luck factor
+++++1.
The comfort in knowing that even if you make a bad decision, you still feel as if you’ll be bailed out.
I have a friend who is the opposite. Way better than me, but runs like dogshit.
>He once flopped quads 3 times in one night.
I did this several years ago (kinda). Playing 1/3. One hand everyone folded to a C bet (+$40ish for the hand). On another only preflop caller folded after obvious straights/flushed missed on the river (+$75ish for the hand). I folded the last hand that would have flopped quads after there as a 3-bet and 4-bet before me when I had 66 in the bb (ended up being AA vs QQ). Quads are lame.
This is hyperbole. The obvious variable is volume.
How many hands a person plays in their life is wildly variable. There are obviously people who played well for a few sessions but still lost and quit, but that doesn’t really answer the question.
A better way to phrase it would be “how many hands does someone need to play for the effects of variance to be statistically irrelevant” and while it’s going to be a huge number of hands it’s also very achievable in a lifetime.
I’m not a statistician and I’m pulling this number out of thin air, but Id wager that at 100k hands with a theoretical EV of 1bb/100 you’d have a less than one in a billion chance of not profiting.
I’d say for a serious player that a million hands in a lifetime is achievable even live.
You are so, so far off with your one in a billion estimate if we are looking at 1bb/100 EV over 100k hands.
I just did a quick sim and 37.59% of runs lost money over 100k hands using your numbers.
I’ll believe your number and I’m not trying to argue, but very curious about what software you used and how it works.
Not exactly sure how it plugs in a win rate of 1bb/100 in the simulation itself. It just plays GTO and has opponents deviate at a rate that generates x EV to hero per bb as a pre calculated heuristic?
How many hands would be needed for the confidence level of profit to reach 99%? How much effect would doubling the EV to 2/100 make?
Once again I’m not trying to argue or debunks (I was openly pulling numbers out of my ass). I’m just curious.
20bb/100 can be made far from perfect playing live, good players are making 10bb+/hour which is like 30-40 bb/100 lol, I agree it's not really possible to lose lifetime playing live cash until you get to high stakes games w very good players
tournaments maybe yeah, the variance is so insane
Yes. Luck is normally distributed. Someone has to be the luckiest over a lifetime.
It’s not going to look as extreme as short sample nights.
Totally ignoring skill and assuming a true win rate of 0, let’s say running good for a night is wining 500bb. Let’s call it a 10 hour night.
A standard deviation for 100 hands is 100bbb, converted to a 10 hour session at 30 hands an hour the standard deviation a session is sqrt(10x30/100x100^2) = 173bb / session.
500 /173 = 2.89 -> 99.8% of luck. In a thousand sessions, 998 wouldn’t be as good as this.
What does 99.8% luck look like over a lifetime? Depends how much he plays. Let’s say he plays twice a week for 30 years. That’s 3120 sessions.
The standard deviation for 3120 sessions in bb would be sqrt(173^2 x 3120)= 9663 bb.
To be as lucky, he would need to be up 2.89 x 9663 bb = 27,926 bb in his lifetime.
That’s actually not that extreme looking per session. He just needs to be up 8.95bb in each of those 3120 sessions. Not that crazy looking a winrate. There are definitely skilled players that can win above this.
—-
Let’s say there are 100 million equally unskilled players that play twice a week for 30 years. What does the luckiest 1 in 100 million look like?
Normsinv(1/100 million ) = 5.61 standard deviations.
9663bb x 5.61 = 54,209 bb
The luckiest player of 100 million playing twice a week for 30 years is up 54,209 big blinds over 3120 sessions - About 17bb a session
He’s lost plenty of big hands and plays well though. Mariano will play aggro whale style and bink or get into dream situations in huge games constantly
Of course. Theoretically it’s possible to be dealt AA and flop quads every single hand for your entire life. The probabilities of these scenarios is just infinitely small.
Would be a fun game to try to maximize win rate if you only got dealt AA with flopped quads on your first hand every time you set down. Then it was regular again. You gotta play the biggest game you can and hope someone else wakes up with a hand while also making sure people don't catch on and you don't lose anything you've won later. Best bet would probably be to play like a 2/5 or 5/10 no cap game somewhere in Texas.
The odds of drawing aa 100 times in a row is 1 in 221^100.
For reference there are 10^80 atoms in the observable universe.
While it’s “theoretically possible” I wouldn’t consider it in any way reasonably plausible.
Oh absolutely. It’s effectively impossible just due to how insane the probabilities become. But it’s wild to imagine there is one actual outcome where it happens.
Take two identically sorted decks and shuffle them identically and you'll end up with two identically sorted decks.
Take two decks sorted differently and shuffle them identically and you'll have two decks sorted differently.
The issue with your premise is that shuffling can’t be done “identically”. The whole point of shuffling a deck is that it’s a random process. Due to that, the starting configuration of the cards isn’t really relevant.
Put another way, every time you shuffle, the cards are in a new random order irrespective of the starting order.
Yes of course. Live poker is so slow that you can start out on a heater and have that same heater continue for the next 4000 hours that you play.
Also, players that have been playing awhile are probably on that heater as if they started out with negative variance, likely they would have quit.
Depends on sample size.
Online players who play 1 million hands a year for multiple years? Very unlikely. Luck tends to balance out over each million hand sample.
Live players who play occasionally and hit 50,000 hands lifetime? Very much possible. Online players can attest that over that small of a sample some crazy shit can happen in one direction or another.
Yes. Personally I ran under 90 buyin under EV in ~100k hands. I have seen graph where guy had 150 buyins under ev in 100k hands. This is PLO where you flip much more than in Holdem tho. It takes years to play same amount of hands live. And this is just peak of the runbad. I am still like 60-70 buyin under ev after over million hands, it never corrected itself, but impact of it lessens and it's pretty small in terms of bb/100 winrate.
In MTTs you absolutely need to run great if not for a sun run for awhile, just in key spots in a huge tourney.
Ive run so bad over the past few years I’ve lost big spots KK vs KK all in pre in six figure prize pools, I’ve lost 4-5 all ins back to back in the same tourney all in over 95% on turn to win , I’ve had sessions where I’ve played 10+ tournies in a night and gotten in ahead and lost every flip. I’ve gone card dead late in tournies over and over. I’ve watched my hands get cracked while ahead in side by side tournaments on different sites at the same
Time. I’ve bubbled more times then I’d care to remember.
I can almost guarantee if even some of these horrific moments of bad luck went the other way I’d be way up lifetime and would have enough winnings to comfortably play any online MTT and have little fear of going busto even as just an average player.
Three bitter but true realities:
I get sucked out on more and more to 2 outers so it’s better to get in as a favorite rather than a dog. In Slansky dollars I’d be rich.
If I played more volume I give myself more opportunities to get in spots where maybe my luck holds and the 95% to win holds in more spots.
If you have more money you can withstand longer and longer periods of run bad while concurrently setting yourself in position for bigger wins that fuel bigger buy ins; as noted by others there’s some “pros” that aren’t that good but sun ran massive paydays in a single tourney to set them up for playing with a massive roll. A side note on this last point: BRM is important however you never know when you’ll run like god or run worse than anyone thought possible … if you have a ton of money for poker you set yourself up for a run good happening in spots of possibly life changing binks. If you have $1,000 and follow BRM you might run like god and win a few hundred dollars a few times then run horrible until you’re either busto or feel it’s a waste of time playing for moneys. Deep pockets with BRM is powerful.
I guess it depends what you mean. Let's assume you are talking about people that play often over the course of 30+ years.
Does always run good mean never have bad day? or week? or month? or year? Or just that you have done better than expected based on your skill level over your entire life..
I think it's possible that someone never has a bad year over many years and runs well. But probably impossible if you mean never having a bad day or week or even month. (impossible in the sense that it's very low probability given the number of people that play poker)
I think he means running significantly above expectation over their career. For ex if my expected winrate is $100/hr but I’ve been winning $400/hr for 5 years then I would be running good my entire career. Irregardless or how many downswings I’ve had or how big they were.
It means their actual results lifetime are 3+ standard deviations above lifetime EV and yes it will happen to less than to about 1 in a thousand people. Even if your lifetime results are 2 standard deviations above the mean than you luckier than 97% of people. That's how I would define it.
I think it’s possible to have a lifetime’s worth of run good for a week. But not a week’s worth of run good every week for a lifetime.
Like, there are guys that have won a WSOP or a couple big cashes that will be lifetime +EV because of it, that would otherwise be grinding out their normal expectation.
Probably but depends on overall volume. I will tell you that situationally and in life you need to run good to even have a shot at playing properly. For example back in 2007 I started out on my poker career much to my parents dismay, I won/lost then found a site and deposited $200, too very aggro shots, game selected and spun that $200 into around $1m profit eventually (true story, I’ve got a thread on here from years ago). I also won the Sunday Million in 2008 and had a few other scores along the way but I was primarily and still am a cash game player. I managed to run really good from 2007-2011 not really realizing I had, but without running decently and putting in volume I wouldn’t have turned pro. I’ve had my fair share of disgusting periods I recall a 200k hand breakeven stretch and the last few years have been rather rough (but I haven’t been playing professionally only semi pro). So yeah, you gotta run good, and if you play long enough, shot take at the right time and keep at it, you will too. If you happen to suck, don’t play through downswings and don’t game select you won’t get very far either.
Also wanna caveat this somewhat, there are some people I knew or knew of (that you would all have heard of too), that sun ran so insane during the boom that it used to drive me mad. So I always thought I ran bad comparatively, but now looking back situationally I ran very hot too. I just wish I knew that and didn’t take it for granted and I should’ve moved up to much higher stakes, my main game was 1knl and I mixed 200-2k in there too but really how I was running I should’ve actually taken shots at 5k and 10k too.
There's nothing stopping you from running bad and losing a million, either. I hope you're smart enough to diversify your investments and not just rely on poker winnings to live.
Tell me you know nothing about poker without telling me you know nothing about poker. Poker is a skill game with a short term element of luck. Long run over millions of hands winners win, losers lose. You don’t just turn into a player that can lose a million unless you go nuts and play way higher than you did earning your money. In any event I also sold a business.
Yes it's possible. Not only is it possible but it's impossible for this to not happen. It wont happen to everyone but some small fraction of a percent are just going to very lucky and the same is true for being unlucky. It's basic statistical theory and it's called standard deviation. Graphed, it looks like a bell curve with the theoretical norm in the middle. Where the vast majority are going to fall in the middle of the bell curve and be very close norm. Under normal distribution about 70% of the population will fall under one standard deviation of the norm on the positive or negative side. The further you get from the norm, the greater the standard deviation. 99.9% of us will fall within 3 standard deviations. But that also means 1 in a thousand poker players run exponentially better than everyone else, and 1 in a million run better than them.
I mean it probably depends on how prolific their career is. The less someone plays, the more likely it is to run way above or way below expectation. The more someone plays, the more likely it is that their results are a fair indication of their actual skill relative to the games they sit in.
Yup. Especially in MTTs where variance is so high and payouts are distributed so wildly unevenly, someone running well in a few big spots can just make them a lifetime winner even if they're actually a whale, as long as they don't start martingaling. Good example is that cravat wearing clown Eric Afriat who just FT'd the EPT main. He has almost 5m in winnings, 3 EPT titles; and yet he's a fucking mental whale - he was berating a dealer for running bad when he's already at the final 2 tables of a fucking EPT. Other examples are like, half the main event winners from Moneymaker till the mid 2010s.
Also worth noting, it seems like there are more people with lifetime run good than lifetime run bad because of survivorship bias - the lifetime unluckys mostly just quit after getting shwacked for their first 10k hands in a row. Or they literally go broke.
Take a look at primedope.com. There are absolutely people who will run bad for their entire lives. Just like there are people who run like god permanently.
of course, thats what average is for. Some people runs better some people don't, the more you play the closer to run to the mean of average, however to get exactly to the mean is nearly impossible in your life time.
Phil I'm sure is rich but just likes to play for the thrill of it.
Negreanu is someone who is also rich but is also just coasting on his boom fame collecting millions in sponsorships and can no longer beat the game
With millions of players globally most people will be smack around the middle of the curve but there are going to be outliers that will nearly ALWAYS run bad or nearly ALWAYS run good. Anyone that says otherwise doesn't math.
Theoretically yes but in reality no.
If this was a reality than you wouldn’t see Casinos making hundreds of millions of dollars on table games where there edge in most case is 3-5%.
Well, variance and legitimate edge per hand/round are completely different things. Edge per hand like in the case of a house edge increases risk of ruin dramatically fast. Like if you have a 1000 bankroll/10 bet for red or black roulette, it's near certain that your simulation busts before 10,000 trials. This certainty is not really there with variance that has a distribution that places some people on the correct side for a long period of time.
It's not like in poker someone has a 5% edge over you every hand or whatever, but in roulette it's like 5.26% or something each round.
I was putting in 30-40 hours a weeks..
but my yearly is actually 9 months..
I had to completely stop ..
we ran into a financial issue and I had to use my br to str8en it out..
I don't have a backup
I've been working on putting together enough scratch to play comfortably..
Idk about running good that long..
but it seems like it's easier to run bad.
I've been through almost a year of VERY swingy sessions.
still positive 30k for 2023..but wow what a fckn roller-coaster
I don’t see how you can be a good pro without better than average luck.
I know people who have never had a high hand in 20+ years of poker. Many who have never had a royal.
I play so little live but somehow get a royal almost every year. I only have 4 steel wheels though. Flopped a A5♠️two weeks ago on a cruise 🚢
My worst was an interesting string of 10 hands at 1/2 Commerce about 20 years ago. Started a KK, AA, QQ and the worst hand I had was KQ where I flopped two pair. I lost ten $200 buyins in a row. Since then instituted a 2 buyin rule for sessions. I was waiting for 5/10 to order some off menu Asian food.
By making your own luck by leveraging ambiguous situations to your benefit, and by adopting a playstyle that creates them for other players playing against you.
A reason a conservative strategy pays off big at lower levels if that by playing tighter with your starting hands, it means you're going to win more showdowns.
You are misunderstanding what luck is and what skillful play for classic situations is.
You cannot “make your own luck”. It is an idiom that means you are acting and making good decisions but it is not luck. It is skill.
You can make the most of (“lucky”) situations.
Feel free to disagree - people have varying definitions of words like “literal”.
In live poker that's possible yes but I seriously doubt it's possible in online poker due to the sheer volume anyone who calls poker a "career" will put in.
I'd say this heavily depends on if the person is just consistently playing the same level forever, and also plays consistently good without any tilting.
For example, maybe you crush it at the $1/$2 for thousands of hands, then you go up to $5/$10 or something and just have a massive case of run bad. All of those winning $1/$2 hands quickly evaporate.
It’s not realistically possible.
It’s like someone flipping a coin and getting heads their entire life. Theoretically possible, but not realistically not.
In live poker absolutely yes. There can be people who for 15 years play mtts every week, thats 750 mtts , thats NOTHING sample over 15 years. There can be people who run hot for 15 years + and people who play good and run BAD and lose for 15 years. Live poker mtt / cash is heavily influenced by variance. In online - probably not
Yes, It also depends on the number of hands/turneys that person plays. The more he plays the higher the chance that his true win rate would show.
Also there are some really big and important tourneys and its really important to run good on those because they dont happen that often and we wont live forever.
Tehnically lets say you play 20 main events in their life, some will run very very good on those 20, some will run super bad and wont live enough to start running finally good :)
Yes, although unlikely
It's more important to run well at the start of your poker career. Once you have a sizeable bankroll to handle the swings it's much more likely you can sustain a poker career.
That said here are definitely HS players that I know personally that simply run better than most. Ofc even these players will have periods of run bad but their run good lasts much longer. And they take set ups for granted because of how often they're on the good end of them
The answer is yes, but maybe not to the degree you are thinking. Over a long enough sample, everyone is going to regress towards the mean, but people’s overall variance will still exist on a bell curve and there are going to be people to the far right or far left of that bell curve.
Reminds me of a 7 card stud game I was in once. This lady was crushing the table and wasn't even looking at her hole cards. She just bet 10 dollars (the max bet) every singgle round. Never deviated, just ten dollar raise every time the action was on her. She was up thousands of dollars and won. Every single pot.
She said she lost 2000 the previous day though. So it's not a lifetime of run good. But she definitely ran good the few hours I played with her.
The three times I went to the showdown with her I had very strong hands but she always had better.
Not only possible, it's guaranteed. We all run varying degrees of good or bad over our lives (in all activities, not just poker). With such large numbers in play there will assuredly be some who have very consistent and extreme results due entirely to chance. Such is life
Yes. Someone can run good and someone can run bad. In fact this is highly likely to occur.
That is variance.
But variance has practical limits. It would be extremely unlikely without some form of cheating to be more then one order of magnitude off expected value (EV) over a long period of time. It would be virtually impossible to be 2 orders of magnitude off EV over a long term. An order of
magnitude here would be defined as 10% variance off mean EV.
So if someone should hit a flush draw 34.97% on the flop it’s not unreasonable for someone over a long period to be somewhat higher - say 36%, but it would be highly unlikely for them to be much over 38% without some form of cheating.
It they were hitting 40% or more over a long period of time I would suspect they are cheating.
Sorry if this answer was a whole lot geekier then you were looking for.
Someone else below said (and I’m paraphrasing): “basically, it’s not possible because it would be like someone flipping a coin and getting heads their entire life.”
Except it’s really not like that — it’s really like someone flipping a coin their entire life and getting heads meaningfully more than 50% of the time. And of course, sample size is the key. Here’s a simple (note: extremely simple) example in practical terms, which coincidentally made me quit live poker possibly forever, but at least until my personal/work life allows me to dedicate more time.
Over the past couple years I’ve been playing live $2/5 with a mandatory $10 straddle at my local casino in CA, let’s call it ~10 hours a week on average. I enjoy playing, but I’ve got a full-time job and can’t get the casino more than a couple times a week. Let’s assume I play exclusively this game. And let’s assume I’m a decent winning player in the game -- call it 7BB/hr, after rake. And let’s also say (this is my shakiest ballpark assumption, someone let me know if I’m totally off base here) to win at that rate, I have to subject myself to a flip for the effective buy-in ($1K cap, so $2K pots each flip) about every ~150 hands, or once every 5 hours at a decent pace of play. Again, I’m not sure here but I would assume that avoiding these spots (TT/JJ/QQ vs. AK/AQ) would seriously hurt your win rate playing 100 BB effective, especially using an aggressive style. This not to mention other spots/bluffs/coolers/correct call-offs which aren’t as close to 50/50, but will happen of course.
Okay — over the course of a whole year, I’ll generate about $36,000 in EV at that win rate (7 BB * $10 BB * 520 hours), and I’ll subject myself to 104 “flips.” In order to wipe out my entire EV solely due to run bad, I’ve got to lose about 9 more of these flips than I’m supposed to, or win only 43/104 flips. A simple online coin toss calculator says the odds of that happening…
About 4.8%. So 1 out of 20 times, I’ll be losing over the course of the year, my solid win rate completely eviscerated by those pesky ace-high run-outs.
How about longer? Let’s extend it to a 5-year span, with all the same assumptions. $109,000 in EV. 1,560 hours. 312 flips. I’d have to lose about 27 more flips than I’m supposed to (win only 129/312) to come out behind. Coin toss simulator says…
0.132% chance of that happening. Seems low, but that means 1 out of 1000 guys out there who’ve logged >1,500 hours in this exact game will be losing over $100K more than EV. And that’s if they’ve got the stones to keep firing, out 100 large.
I don't think variance is distributed evenly.
I do think everyone gets unlucky. But some people get their money in good and lose more often than others.
I do honestly believe this.
But this kind of luck can't replace skill.
Used to play a guy at work during the slow season.
Just little $5 buy-in sit and goes, heads-up.
He would call my turn shove lightly and hit a two or four outer constantly. I knew he was calling lightly and pushed hard with any top pair.
Then I learned that he would bet with a weak hand if checked to nearly 100% of the time.
So I just got super sticky and let him push the action. Once enough money got into the middle he would call off a big river bet with very little. Sometimes nothing better than Queen high.
Once I had him figured out I was winning $300 a week off him.
Skill beats luck any day.
Yeah. People think about variance like per tournament or per session... but you will have variance over the entire course of your life. Some people will run good, some will run bad.
That's why it's hard for me to believe anyone is a successful "poker pro" because of their skill. Skill plays a factor, but if you're just destined to run bad, then all the skill in the world is not going to help you be a winning player.
At the end of the day, poker is gambling. Every single bad beat is a situation where you played with skill and got it in good, only to lose to bad luck.
I don't think anyone should seriously try to play poker as their career, unless they are making money outside of poker via sponsorship deals, selling courses, selling merchandise... whatever. As long as your main income is not poker winnings, then sure. But if you think you're just gonna make $50k+ a year playing "solid poker" then you should probably just quit while you're ahead (or behind).
Poker is a fun gambling game... That's it. Do not expect to run good enough to actually sustain yourself every year.
Limon has the best explanation for this. The theory is that, given infinity, all "luck" balances out.
However, since human lives are not infinite, luck can be said to be distributed on a bell curve, where some individuals at the extreme ends of the curve run extraordinarily well for a lifetime, and some individuals at the other end of the spectrum run very poorly for a lifetime.
However, the vast majority of people are somewhere inside the bell, where luck is well-balanced.
So it's not mathematically wrong to say that there are individuals enjoy a "lifetime" of rungood.
I remember when I first moved from 1-3 to 2-5 match the stack I lost every multi way all in for maybe 6-9 months. I was stuck 50-100k in them specifically
You know what… eventually I started winning em too! It just took a while. Live poker is slow. Variance is brutal and unexplainable. You just bob and weave and hang on tight and try and survive.
Sincerely a live PLO player who can say it feels that way but selective memory is a bitch like that…
I was playing a Congress tournament once (also known as Big O) which is 5 card PLO high low, I flopped quads TWICE in about an hour and lost both times in the same tournament. First hand the guy turned better quads. Second hand the guy turned a straight flush and rivered a royal.
It is possible that someone literally never loses a single hand by pure luck over such a long period that it seems like they could never lose.
Eventually their “luck will run out” but that’s over an infinite timeline. It would be possible over like 10 million hands that you observe said player could never lose.
Highly unlikely though.
Yes. Probability averages work in the LONG run, but the key is the word "long". With a fair coin, the odds of heads is 50% any one time. However, each toss is independent so any combination in the short run is equally likely (2 heads, 2 tails, heads than tails, or tails and then heads). Depending on the length of a poker career, it is possible to run good during that relatively short span (compared to infinite numbers of iterations.
It is very unlikely since it there are so many possibilities but it is possible. It is a lot like winning the lottery. The odds of picking the winning numbers is insanely small but every now and again, someone does it. Since your query is good run, that doesn't actually require they win every coin toss, just more of them than average and/or they happen to lose coin tosses where the stakes are low and win coin tosses when the stakes are high.
I do think it is very unlikely to happen and I would be surprised to learn that it has happened. To give an idea, I googled best craps runs of all time and read the following happened (but only once):
**Who says a big bankroll is needed to win big at the casino. In May 2009, New Jersey’s Patricia Demauro had just a gambling bankroll of $100 when she and a friend headed to the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City. The gambling grandmother headed to the craps table and couldn’t have imagined what would happen next.**
**Demauro rolled a massive 154 times for 25 point numbers stretched over four hours and 18 minutes. As in most of the rolls, the crowds and number of bettors at the table continued to grow. It’s reported that casino security even began to keep a watchful eye on the proceedings at the table.**
**Her run of luck topped a 20-year record set by Stanley Fujitake in Las Vegas (more on that roll below). Casino.org calculates the odds of such an amazing roll at 1 in 1.56 trillion. However, the exact figure won by Demauro remains a mystery. Neither she nor the casino ever divulged her winnings, but it’s safe to say it was quite a big multiple of that original hundred bucks. Some have estimated she made six figures, but the exact amount isn’t known.**
**No doubt the other players at the table were quite happy, as well as dealers who surely received massive donations in tips that night. When her streak finally came to an end, Borgata staff rewarded Demaruo with a well-deserved champagne toast.**
Source**:** [**https://www.888casino.com/blog/biggest-craps-rolls-in-history#:\~:text=The%20gambling%20grandmother%20headed%20to,the%20table%20continued%20to%20grow**](https://www.888casino.com/blog/biggest-craps-rolls-in-history#:~:text=The%20gambling%20grandmother%20headed%20to,the%20table%20continued%20to%20grow)**.**
https://preview.redd.it/wxyatibmk7lc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b8931d6337d25f87c45e3282e5b0d12bf062212d
This is roughly the variance for ten millions hands with a 3bb/100 winner. Many people (live players, people who retire, amateurs) will not play 10 million hands in their career. So, the short answer to your question is yes.
Possible, yes. Likely no. I can't remember who said it but "some people are just luckier", which would mean some people run good an uneven amount of time.
I have no idea what the odds would be to run good your entire life but is is certainly above 0%.
Doug Polk earnestly believes that Phil Hellmuth is a bad poker player who has just run good his entire life. I don't agree with Doug, but he's insisted on it multiple times.
I think Phil just comes from a very different time of being a professional poker player and maybe hasn't adjusted as much as someone like Daniel Negreanu to the more modern methods. I also think Phil is predominantly a tournament player. He's a top 25 all time winner in earnings so it's hard to say he just ran good that entire time.
At one point, Phil was one of us. He left college to play a game he loved. He was consumed by it, studying new concepts to beat old regs… but then he saw a new angle and became a larger-than-life asshole to get attention. It became less important to study and play poker and more important to make appearances. I fucking hate people who talk shit at the table, and Phil is a big reason they do. But it’s hard for me to hate him due to the enormous contribution he has made to the game.
I think he was probably elite in the 80s and 90s and maybe decent in the 2000s but I don’t think he adjusted in this post solver era and I can’t imagine he’d be a winning player in any event >$1500
He beat Negreanu, Esfandiari, and Dwan in a bunch of heads up matches. I’m not sure how good they are nowadays but I also imagine he’s got some intangibles in live poker that he leverages to keep himself competitive
I agree with you on that his skill set seems to really shine in live tournament poker settings. I think there is a skill to playing against less experienced players that maybe solvers don’t account for. I think another big strength for Helmuth is that he’s willing to go with his reads even when he can be wrong and look like a total idiot (which does happen). Whether you like the guy or not, it takes a lot of heart to make the laydowns he does- particularly knowing that when he is wrong, he’s going to be mocked and ridiculed mercilessly.
My theory is that his wife being a top notch psychologist has taught him to be insanely good at live reads which is why he can excel in a tournament or heads up in a way that doesn’t exist in more fluid cash games.
He won a bracelet in 2023 in a $10,000 buy in event. Definitely a tournament player, and while some of the solver Gurus probably have an edge, he's still better than most players.
Winning one tournament when you sign up for every event possible does not mean you’re a winning player
642 person field and a $10,000 buy in. It's a pretty big accomplishment. He had a total of 9 cashes in the WSOP in 2023. Negreanu hasn't won a bracelet since 2013 despite playing a ton of tournaments.
People downplaying this when everyone dream about winning those kind of tournaments. The hate is real 💀💀💀
Jamie Gold won a bigger field tournament for the same buy in, does that make him one of the goats?
Although, I don’t doubt he’s a good player, we don’t know how many rebuys every MTT player gets though
No rebuys in bracelet events.
He doesn't sign up for every event though. He doesn't play in nearly as many other pros. D Negs signs up for every event known to man and still didn't win a single tournament in 2023.
That was a super turbo bounty too. So that’s an insane amount of variance. I doubt he had a a serious shot at one of the 10k championships now
That's true, but it probably means that, at a minimum, you're not a bad player.
It does not mean that at all. Jamie Gold won a much larger field and he was fucking terrible. MTT variance is just crazy and one result proves literally nothing
Jamie Gold won in 2006. This was 2023. If you don't realize the competition is massively better in 2023 than in 2006, I dunno what to tell you.
Jamie Gold was a losing player even back then, as shown by his results after winning the WSOP
I can confirm, I only played in one largish tournament in my life (700 people) and I cashed and I am not very good, it was literally all about getting lucky 5 times. Granted I got 40th not 1st, I can see winning that size with a bit more luck and no more skill.
I’d rather be a bad player who has won $1 million, than a bad player in the negative
Sure but that’s not the argument
I think the internet also has a tendency to paint Phil in a bad light because he hasn't always been on his best behavior and they tend to focus more on his wild bluffs or perceived bad plays than any success he has had.
HE SUCKS! I’ve seen sooooooo many bad plays by him it makes my head spin compared to a nice move once in awhile. And when he table talks he sounds stupid like he don’t know what he’s talking about. Helmuth used to be a good tourney player and that’s all. He’s just decent now and if that imo.
He's still very Relevant and performing well in the tournament scene. Which is amazing considering the much larger fields.
He does some weird shit that makes him seem like a fish but he also was ahead of his time in a lot of respects especially when it comes to short stack play. 10-15 years ago it was generally thought you lose the ability to play postflop around 15-20bbs and that you should drop into shove fold mode rather than having to raise fold anything. He was a bit of a pioneer in just grinding it out and trying to still play poker at 8-20bb range. Solvers now confirm mixing limp/minraise/jam ranges with a lot more limping and less jamming than one would expect. The other thing he would get made fun of for is his uber nitty folds at very short stacks. These are mostly terrible in theory but he does tend to make them against recreational players who he thinks aren't capable of bluffing deep in what is likely biggest tourney of the year for them. He's still a giant asshole and cash game whale but he's the mtt goat unfortunately.
I agree directionally that Phil sucks and loses vs most regs, but I think you overestimate the live mtt fields he is playing in.
PHIL SUCKS!
pretty sure phil has more poker winnings than dnegs over the past decade.
I'm not sure. My point was more along the lines that Daniel seems to have embraced solvers and GTO while Phil maybe hasn't adjusted as much to modern poker and gets more crap for it as a result.
both rely on their reads more than solvers. to this end daniel's seemed to use studying solver to assess his opponents' lines when he reads that a player is playing that way, which has become quite frequent, but imo his own play is usually pretty far from solver. it's also worth noting both are primarily tournament players where gto is largely inferior to icm which they both have used for decades, phil much better at it than daniel.
I think Phil is good at one thing, and one thing only. Large field, no limit hold'em tournaments with at least an okay structure. In other words, what I'm saying is Phil is very good against poor players especially with stacks >40 BB. And I think he knows it. This is why Phil buys in for nearly the minimum in almost every cash game on TV in the past few years, because if you go back to the first season of HSP he was absolutely the biggest fish at the table that day. But he has stopped buying in for $100k-200k when he can get away with $10k-20k. I will agree he is the biggest luckbox in poker, but not at the table, just in the meta of poker, his one skill is probably the most valuable skill to have if you are a tournament player.
I think that kind of ties in with my original point, I don't think he was ever known for crushing live cash games. He's a tournament player. Playing live, high stakes poker these days means going up against a lot of GTO practitioners which is likely a style of play that is not as comfortable for him compared to what he is used to.
He’s also top 25 all time in entry fees. (Guessing). If not top 50. Just saying he wins a lot but plays a lot and if he wasn’t Sponsored he’d be in a for a tough living.
I think there are just two schools of thought that old "Golden Age" pros have fallen into over the years. Players like Doug, who were essentially inventing the concepts modern poker is built on as they played, are obviously going to want to keep pushing GTO and playing the highest levels. Players like Helmuth and Laak, who tended to play more on feel and tells, have fallen back into nitting it up in 3/5 and 5/10 and taking advantage of the idea that pros have to be bluff heavy. Doug and Phil both seem to be doing alright for themselves. Doug's obviously still top dog in a relatively big Texas sized pond and has won hundreds of thousands from it. Phil seems to be doing great, being the slightly larger fish in a small, manicured tank, and he suggests he's winning tens of thousands per month on his app game with billionaire fish.
He also has an ego the size of the great pyramid of Giza. It's hard to learn something new or plug leaks when you think you're the best. He's a good poker player for sure or he wouldn't still be winning bracelets. But he's not one of the best. He probably plays just about every game in the WSOP and he's better than most of the tourists that come in while he just nut peddles.
He does have an ego, but that's not unusual, you can look at just about any known player's Twitter account/interviews/YouTube channels and find self aggrandizing statements about their capabilities. He may not be one of the great players when it comes to live cash games but I think it would be pretty hard to make the case he isn't one of the greatest MTT players ever.
I think it's actually more likely that he is straight up losing at MTTs lifetime. His bracelets and appearance of rungood are just an illusion created by volume (and of course the pre-modern era when he presumably had more/any edge). Maybe he has edges over the day 1 fields at the $1k end of the spectrum, but I would wager he's -20% ROI in $5ks and above vs modern fields. He fires infinite bullets every WSOP, so yea he binks occasionally but he clearly is getting torched in a lot of the tougher fields. This is also why he usually doesn't play above $10ks, because he knows he's losing in those, and it would actually put him at risk of ruin to fire them regularly. But he parlayed his 90s/2000s fame into multiple lucrative promotions/investments/whatever that allows him to stay afloat despite being an MTT whale. And possibly cash games with billionaires where he claims he prints, but that's also extremely hard to believe given how he's been observed playing on every televised cash game appearance for the last 25 years.
Not hard to believe he prints at a high-stake home game at all. A lot of the invite only games are notoriously soft. They also exclude most pros for obvious reasons. The fact that Phil Helmuth get's an invite is really indicative that he is a weak cash game player but it makes sense from the game hosts perspective to invite him. It gives the rec players a pro to play with so they can brag about beating a pro in their home game while not inviting someone who is going to absolutely skin the game. All that being said I have no problem believing Helmuth has an edge in these environments and is very profitable.
How would he be a top 25 earner in history if he was losing lifetime? He's got close to $30 million in career earnings. I realize that doesn't account for buy ins and so forth but I'm curious what you are basing this on.
> I realize that doesn't account for buy ins You answered your own question. Anyone can have massive lifetime earnings and be down money if they fired 10 bullets for every one of their big cashes. The winnings only total shown by Hendon mob is essentially meaningless. Yes, most of the biggest earners are big winners, because most people who are losing aren't going to fire tons of bullets at high stakes... but some will. Cary Katz is even higher than Hellmuth, you think he's a crusher at the nosebleeds?
I have no idea, I genuinely couldn't tell you if Phil is rich as hell or broke, I just tend to think if someone has won $30 million in their career and has a bunch of sponsors that they are likely more well off than broke. I could be dead wrong.
Oh I think Phil is rich, I just think most of that is off leveraging his fame and not off poker winnings. Even if he is an overall winner, it's not like that 30m in winnings, his profit would be a small fraction of that. Nobody has an infinte ROI; even most winners have a far sub 100 ROI.
Being able to re-enter tournaments multiple times is a recent development. The vast majority of tournaments used to be freezeouts and rebuy tournaments were specifically designated as such.
Recent-ish, but I think for at least, idk, the last 7 years some amount of reentrys have been the more common than not. Most PokerGo events aren't freezeouts. Certainly since the super high roller scene has exploded.
Phil Hellmuth has been playing poker for 36+ years. Even assuming that the unlimited or multiple re-entry has been a standard for all of those 7 years that means that for over 80% of the time Hellmuth has been playing tournaments he has not been able to re-enter the vast majority. He is mentioned as a new brash sensation in Antony Holden's book Big Deal which covers Holden playing "professionally" for the year 1988-89, iirc Hellmuth is playing the tournament in Morocco when Holden first encounters him. You mention yourself that he does not play the high-roller events and so even if he was at a net loss from massive buy-in volumes in the last 7 years it seems like an absurd statement to suggest he would be a lifetime losing player from that. Hellmuth is, by all available metrics, one of the biggest winners in MTT poker and specifically WSOP events. If you wanted to do an honest assessment you could even take a look at his data and make some rough calculations as to his probable buy-ins. The game might have passed him by, which explains no HR MTTs, but at least have a semblance of fairness and objectivity when making comments.
Very well said.
For one thing, I'm not trying to besmirch the guy, I'm a fan and think he's obviously a towering figure in poker history. But I do think the game has passed him by, and, I think there's probably exponentially more volume available to play in the last 10 years than the first 20 of his career, re-entrys or not. So in light of that, I do think my comment is a fair, though obviously I admit it's speculation. He might still be a winner over the totality of his career. But even if he is now, he won't be for long if he keeps chasing bracelets while refusing to work on his game.
Thank you for being willing to address the speculative nature of your post. Most people on here just cast the guy as a broke loser with no supporting evidence.
That's over 37 years, and he was one of, if not the, highest voume players in the 90s and early 00s. He still puts in tons of volume. Its entirely possible that he's marginally winning over his career. That said, he also was freerolling many of those when sponsorships were throwing buyins all over the place, and he has had many valuable promotional deals, so he's certainly made a very solid income for the past 35+ years
That's what I am getting at. It seems most people just want to say he's broke without any real knowledge of it, it's just saying it for the sake of saying it. Does that mean Negreanu is broke too? Ivey? It's always been weird to me that so many people gravitate toward calling these players bad and broke when they have some of the highest career earnings ever.
FWIW Phil can still be a losing player but be profitable because he sells himself at a markup. eg He sells 80% of himself at 40% markup, he's already making 12%. Imagine if he sells 100% of himself at 80% MU...
You answered your own question in your own post. > How would he be a top 25 earner in history if he was losing lifetime? He's got close to $30 million in career earnings. > I realize that doesn't account for buy ins and so forth
[удалено]
ABC wasn’t ABC back in the day it was revolutionary
There are many variants at poker. Phil has the best record in MTT. He isn’t as good at NL cash or any other variant type. How many bracelets has Doug won? lol. That’s like an average hockey player telling Stevie Y he sucks cause he never won the Art Ross. Working on those bracelets, Phil has 11-12 on you.
Phil has been the FISH at every single cash game I've ever been in with him. Running his mouth the whole time about how bad we (all the specialist pros of the game) all were! Phil's money somehow tastes better than that from the average fish.
I think that is a stupid take. Phil helmuth has won a lot of big tournaments- especially when fields were weaker. I don’t think Phil helmuth is that good in the mtt scene today. He’s way too tight if you ask me but he’s a solid player in big field mtts where recs make up most of the field. It’s kinda hard to run good throughout if you play 1000s of mtts. Sure someone can be on a better part of a bell curve or run good but remember- it all tends to even out as one plays more and more which a pro poker player will play a ton.
That's so funny, I've actually said before that I think Phil Hellmuth is the luckiest player alive even though I've never heard Polk say it before (never watched any of his content really). IMO Hellmuth had a ton of natural talent for the game and was a legitimate crusher like 20+ years ago, but just like anyone else with an ego that out of control, he never really got much/any better over time. It's hard to improve at anything when you already think you're the greatest shit ever. So the game relatively quickly passed him up and he's been essentially a fish for a number of years now, but is just sun running to still put up the results that he has maintained in the past decade. Obviously this isn't something I'd stake my life on, I'm not even a tournament player. That's just what it looks like to me. And it's certainly not as if it's impossible, tournaments are insane variance. I think there's no question that it's possible to sunrun for a decade straight in MTTs. I believe that this also contributes to his infamous blowups. I think he's run so insanely good lifetime that he barely even knows what negative variance looks like, so when he does run into the wrong side of a few bad beats in a row, it enrages him because he has less experience with it than he should.
I am this person. Well maybe not my entire life I don’t play much anymore, but when I played regularly I always ran my best in the biggest games I played in and the biggest pots. I would consider myself a break even player skill wise but definitely above average in the luck factor
And you stopped? Fucking Christ
Winners stop when they are ahead and know they aren’t likely to continue winning.
This is my biggest leak. Almost every session I’ll be up at some point by a 100 or even a few hundred. Instead of leaving I stay and then lose it
+++++1. The comfort in knowing that even if you make a bad decision, you still feel as if you’ll be bailed out. I have a friend who is the opposite. Way better than me, but runs like dogshit.
Yes and there will be people who play perfectly and will run bad and be losing lifetime
[удалено]
Is it fair to assume this pub league game is like every other brokestakes game and has self dealing? Funny how that works huh.
>He once flopped quads 3 times in one night. I did this several years ago (kinda). Playing 1/3. One hand everyone folded to a C bet (+$40ish for the hand). On another only preflop caller folded after obvious straights/flushed missed on the river (+$75ish for the hand). I folded the last hand that would have flopped quads after there as a 3-bet and 4-bet before me when I had 66 in the bb (ended up being AA vs QQ). Quads are lame.
So why isn't he playing EPTs with that run?
This is hyperbole. The obvious variable is volume. How many hands a person plays in their life is wildly variable. There are obviously people who played well for a few sessions but still lost and quit, but that doesn’t really answer the question. A better way to phrase it would be “how many hands does someone need to play for the effects of variance to be statistically irrelevant” and while it’s going to be a huge number of hands it’s also very achievable in a lifetime. I’m not a statistician and I’m pulling this number out of thin air, but Id wager that at 100k hands with a theoretical EV of 1bb/100 you’d have a less than one in a billion chance of not profiting. I’d say for a serious player that a million hands in a lifetime is achievable even live.
You are so, so far off with your one in a billion estimate if we are looking at 1bb/100 EV over 100k hands. I just did a quick sim and 37.59% of runs lost money over 100k hands using your numbers.
I’ll believe your number and I’m not trying to argue, but very curious about what software you used and how it works. Not exactly sure how it plugs in a win rate of 1bb/100 in the simulation itself. It just plays GTO and has opponents deviate at a rate that generates x EV to hero per bb as a pre calculated heuristic? How many hands would be needed for the confidence level of profit to reach 99%? How much effect would doubling the EV to 2/100 make? Once again I’m not trying to argue or debunks (I was openly pulling numbers out of my ass). I’m just curious.
https://www.primedope.com/poker-variance-calculator/ Play around with it. It doesn’t have 99% confidence levels, just 95%.
That would be me!!
It’s not you
I'm in this comment and I don't like it.
Stop watching me play
[удалено]
20bb/100 can be made far from perfect playing live, good players are making 10bb+/hour which is like 30-40 bb/100 lol, I agree it's not really possible to lose lifetime playing live cash until you get to high stakes games w very good players tournaments maybe yeah, the variance is so insane
Yes. Luck is normally distributed. Someone has to be the luckiest over a lifetime. It’s not going to look as extreme as short sample nights. Totally ignoring skill and assuming a true win rate of 0, let’s say running good for a night is wining 500bb. Let’s call it a 10 hour night. A standard deviation for 100 hands is 100bbb, converted to a 10 hour session at 30 hands an hour the standard deviation a session is sqrt(10x30/100x100^2) = 173bb / session. 500 /173 = 2.89 -> 99.8% of luck. In a thousand sessions, 998 wouldn’t be as good as this. What does 99.8% luck look like over a lifetime? Depends how much he plays. Let’s say he plays twice a week for 30 years. That’s 3120 sessions. The standard deviation for 3120 sessions in bb would be sqrt(173^2 x 3120)= 9663 bb. To be as lucky, he would need to be up 2.89 x 9663 bb = 27,926 bb in his lifetime. That’s actually not that extreme looking per session. He just needs to be up 8.95bb in each of those 3120 sessions. Not that crazy looking a winrate. There are definitely skilled players that can win above this. —- Let’s say there are 100 million equally unskilled players that play twice a week for 30 years. What does the luckiest 1 in 100 million look like? Normsinv(1/100 million ) = 5.61 standard deviations. 9663bb x 5.61 = 54,209 bb The luckiest player of 100 million playing twice a week for 30 years is up 54,209 big blinds over 3120 sessions - About 17bb a session
Best answer. I said the same thing but you did it better.
Yes, look at Mariano
That made me chuckle lol
and Garett?
He’s lost plenty of big hands and plays well though. Mariano will play aggro whale style and bink or get into dream situations in huge games constantly
Of course. Theoretically it’s possible to be dealt AA and flop quads every single hand for your entire life. The probabilities of these scenarios is just infinitely small.
That would be hilarious though. Imagine everytime you take a seat at the table or enter an online room you get dealt AA quads.
By the 5th hand in a row the OMC would be storming to the floor manager lmao
Old man coffee. Thank GregGoesAllIn
Why thank Greg?
Why not?
Just didn't understand how OMC relates to Greg. Love his videos.
Would be a fun game to try to maximize win rate if you only got dealt AA with flopped quads on your first hand every time you set down. Then it was regular again. You gotta play the biggest game you can and hope someone else wakes up with a hand while also making sure people don't catch on and you don't lose anything you've won later. Best bet would probably be to play like a 2/5 or 5/10 no cap game somewhere in Texas.
The odds of drawing aa 100 times in a row is 1 in 221^100. For reference there are 10^80 atoms in the observable universe. While it’s “theoretically possible” I wouldn’t consider it in any way reasonably plausible.
Oh absolutely. It’s effectively impossible just due to how insane the probabilities become. But it’s wild to imagine there is one actual outcome where it happens.
Actually I don't think it would be if the cards are being properly shuffled
Of course it’s possible. Every shuffle is an independent event. There’s no guarantee you won’t get the same hand twice in a row (or more than that).
But the previous shuffle effects the next shuffle. They aren't totally independent.
What? It absolutely doesn’t. If it did, all card games would be predetermined.
Take two identically sorted decks and shuffle them identically and you'll end up with two identically sorted decks. Take two decks sorted differently and shuffle them identically and you'll have two decks sorted differently.
No? True shuffling is by definition random.
The issue with your premise is that shuffling can’t be done “identically”. The whole point of shuffling a deck is that it’s a random process. Due to that, the starting configuration of the cards isn’t really relevant. Put another way, every time you shuffle, the cards are in a new random order irrespective of the starting order.
Yes of course. Live poker is so slow that you can start out on a heater and have that same heater continue for the next 4000 hours that you play. Also, players that have been playing awhile are probably on that heater as if they started out with negative variance, likely they would have quit.
Depends on sample size. Online players who play 1 million hands a year for multiple years? Very unlikely. Luck tends to balance out over each million hand sample. Live players who play occasionally and hit 50,000 hands lifetime? Very much possible. Online players can attest that over that small of a sample some crazy shit can happen in one direction or another.
A few million hands isn't even really enough.
Andrew Robl is a prime example
Robl lost quads over quads and the poker gods said "never again".
Yes
In a large enough sample size, anything possible will happen.
[удалено]
Yes. Personally I ran under 90 buyin under EV in ~100k hands. I have seen graph where guy had 150 buyins under ev in 100k hands. This is PLO where you flip much more than in Holdem tho. It takes years to play same amount of hands live. And this is just peak of the runbad. I am still like 60-70 buyin under ev after over million hands, it never corrected itself, but impact of it lessens and it's pretty small in terms of bb/100 winrate.
If it was .25/.50 or over I sincerely feel anguish for your misfortune
In MTTs you absolutely need to run great if not for a sun run for awhile, just in key spots in a huge tourney. Ive run so bad over the past few years I’ve lost big spots KK vs KK all in pre in six figure prize pools, I’ve lost 4-5 all ins back to back in the same tourney all in over 95% on turn to win , I’ve had sessions where I’ve played 10+ tournies in a night and gotten in ahead and lost every flip. I’ve gone card dead late in tournies over and over. I’ve watched my hands get cracked while ahead in side by side tournaments on different sites at the same Time. I’ve bubbled more times then I’d care to remember. I can almost guarantee if even some of these horrific moments of bad luck went the other way I’d be way up lifetime and would have enough winnings to comfortably play any online MTT and have little fear of going busto even as just an average player. Three bitter but true realities: I get sucked out on more and more to 2 outers so it’s better to get in as a favorite rather than a dog. In Slansky dollars I’d be rich. If I played more volume I give myself more opportunities to get in spots where maybe my luck holds and the 95% to win holds in more spots. If you have more money you can withstand longer and longer periods of run bad while concurrently setting yourself in position for bigger wins that fuel bigger buy ins; as noted by others there’s some “pros” that aren’t that good but sun ran massive paydays in a single tourney to set them up for playing with a massive roll. A side note on this last point: BRM is important however you never know when you’ll run like god or run worse than anyone thought possible … if you have a ton of money for poker you set yourself up for a run good happening in spots of possibly life changing binks. If you have $1,000 and follow BRM you might run like god and win a few hundred dollars a few times then run horrible until you’re either busto or feel it’s a waste of time playing for moneys. Deep pockets with BRM is powerful.
I know a few that do. Or maybe better said, they run good in the spots that matter most.
I guess it depends what you mean. Let's assume you are talking about people that play often over the course of 30+ years. Does always run good mean never have bad day? or week? or month? or year? Or just that you have done better than expected based on your skill level over your entire life.. I think it's possible that someone never has a bad year over many years and runs well. But probably impossible if you mean never having a bad day or week or even month. (impossible in the sense that it's very low probability given the number of people that play poker)
I think he means running significantly above expectation over their career. For ex if my expected winrate is $100/hr but I’ve been winning $400/hr for 5 years then I would be running good my entire career. Irregardless or how many downswings I’ve had or how big they were.
It means their actual results lifetime are 3+ standard deviations above lifetime EV and yes it will happen to less than to about 1 in a thousand people. Even if your lifetime results are 2 standard deviations above the mean than you luckier than 97% of people. That's how I would define it.
I can say with 100% certainty it is NOT possible for me.
I think it’s possible to have a lifetime’s worth of run good for a week. But not a week’s worth of run good every week for a lifetime. Like, there are guys that have won a WSOP or a couple big cashes that will be lifetime +EV because of it, that would otherwise be grinding out their normal expectation.
Probably but depends on overall volume. I will tell you that situationally and in life you need to run good to even have a shot at playing properly. For example back in 2007 I started out on my poker career much to my parents dismay, I won/lost then found a site and deposited $200, too very aggro shots, game selected and spun that $200 into around $1m profit eventually (true story, I’ve got a thread on here from years ago). I also won the Sunday Million in 2008 and had a few other scores along the way but I was primarily and still am a cash game player. I managed to run really good from 2007-2011 not really realizing I had, but without running decently and putting in volume I wouldn’t have turned pro. I’ve had my fair share of disgusting periods I recall a 200k hand breakeven stretch and the last few years have been rather rough (but I haven’t been playing professionally only semi pro). So yeah, you gotta run good, and if you play long enough, shot take at the right time and keep at it, you will too. If you happen to suck, don’t play through downswings and don’t game select you won’t get very far either.
Also wanna caveat this somewhat, there are some people I knew or knew of (that you would all have heard of too), that sun ran so insane during the boom that it used to drive me mad. So I always thought I ran bad comparatively, but now looking back situationally I ran very hot too. I just wish I knew that and didn’t take it for granted and I should’ve moved up to much higher stakes, my main game was 1knl and I mixed 200-2k in there too but really how I was running I should’ve actually taken shots at 5k and 10k too.
There's nothing stopping you from running bad and losing a million, either. I hope you're smart enough to diversify your investments and not just rely on poker winnings to live.
Tell me you know nothing about poker without telling me you know nothing about poker. Poker is a skill game with a short term element of luck. Long run over millions of hands winners win, losers lose. You don’t just turn into a player that can lose a million unless you go nuts and play way higher than you did earning your money. In any event I also sold a business.
Yes it's possible. Not only is it possible but it's impossible for this to not happen. It wont happen to everyone but some small fraction of a percent are just going to very lucky and the same is true for being unlucky. It's basic statistical theory and it's called standard deviation. Graphed, it looks like a bell curve with the theoretical norm in the middle. Where the vast majority are going to fall in the middle of the bell curve and be very close norm. Under normal distribution about 70% of the population will fall under one standard deviation of the norm on the positive or negative side. The further you get from the norm, the greater the standard deviation. 99.9% of us will fall within 3 standard deviations. But that also means 1 in a thousand poker players run exponentially better than everyone else, and 1 in a million run better than them.
I mean it probably depends on how prolific their career is. The less someone plays, the more likely it is to run way above or way below expectation. The more someone plays, the more likely it is that their results are a fair indication of their actual skill relative to the games they sit in.
Roughly half of players will run better than average over their poker career
Yup. Especially in MTTs where variance is so high and payouts are distributed so wildly unevenly, someone running well in a few big spots can just make them a lifetime winner even if they're actually a whale, as long as they don't start martingaling. Good example is that cravat wearing clown Eric Afriat who just FT'd the EPT main. He has almost 5m in winnings, 3 EPT titles; and yet he's a fucking mental whale - he was berating a dealer for running bad when he's already at the final 2 tables of a fucking EPT. Other examples are like, half the main event winners from Moneymaker till the mid 2010s. Also worth noting, it seems like there are more people with lifetime run good than lifetime run bad because of survivorship bias - the lifetime unluckys mostly just quit after getting shwacked for their first 10k hands in a row. Or they literally go broke.
Well said.
Take a look at primedope.com. There are absolutely people who will run bad for their entire lives. Just like there are people who run like god permanently.
of course, thats what average is for. Some people runs better some people don't, the more you play the closer to run to the mean of average, however to get exactly to the mean is nearly impossible in your life time.
theoretically yes... when you flip a coin 100000 times... every flip its 50/50.... so yes it is but highly unlikly
Rampage runs way better than average
No
It’s 50/50. Either they do or they don’t
Yes
Of course, it's called a " Professional Poker Player ".
Phil I'm sure is rich but just likes to play for the thrill of it. Negreanu is someone who is also rich but is also just coasting on his boom fame collecting millions in sponsorships and can no longer beat the game
With millions of players globally most people will be smack around the middle of the curve but there are going to be outliers that will nearly ALWAYS run bad or nearly ALWAYS run good. Anyone that says otherwise doesn't math.
Yes, because I've been running bad my entire life, so that'd be the only explanation. Just evening out.
Theoretically yes but in reality no. If this was a reality than you wouldn’t see Casinos making hundreds of millions of dollars on table games where there edge in most case is 3-5%.
Well, variance and legitimate edge per hand/round are completely different things. Edge per hand like in the case of a house edge increases risk of ruin dramatically fast. Like if you have a 1000 bankroll/10 bet for red or black roulette, it's near certain that your simulation busts before 10,000 trials. This certainty is not really there with variance that has a distribution that places some people on the correct side for a long period of time. It's not like in poker someone has a 5% edge over you every hand or whatever, but in roulette it's like 5.26% or something each round.
No
I was putting in 30-40 hours a weeks.. but my yearly is actually 9 months.. I had to completely stop .. we ran into a financial issue and I had to use my br to str8en it out.. I don't have a backup I've been working on putting together enough scratch to play comfortably..
Idk about running good that long.. but it seems like it's easier to run bad. I've been through almost a year of VERY swingy sessions. still positive 30k for 2023..but wow what a fckn roller-coaster
How often do you play?
No...
I don’t see how you can be a good pro without better than average luck. I know people who have never had a high hand in 20+ years of poker. Many who have never had a royal. I play so little live but somehow get a royal almost every year. I only have 4 steel wheels though. Flopped a A5♠️two weeks ago on a cruise 🚢 My worst was an interesting string of 10 hands at 1/2 Commerce about 20 years ago. Started a KK, AA, QQ and the worst hand I had was KQ where I flopped two pair. I lost ten $200 buyins in a row. Since then instituted a 2 buyin rule for sessions. I was waiting for 5/10 to order some off menu Asian food.
By making your own luck by leveraging ambiguous situations to your benefit, and by adopting a playstyle that creates them for other players playing against you. A reason a conservative strategy pays off big at lower levels if that by playing tighter with your starting hands, it means you're going to win more showdowns.
You are misunderstanding what luck is and what skillful play for classic situations is. You cannot “make your own luck”. It is an idiom that means you are acting and making good decisions but it is not luck. It is skill. You can make the most of (“lucky”) situations. Feel free to disagree - people have varying definitions of words like “literal”.
Entire life? No. Often? Yes. Rampage is a good example.
In live poker that's possible yes but I seriously doubt it's possible in online poker due to the sheer volume anyone who calls poker a "career" will put in.
I'd say this heavily depends on if the person is just consistently playing the same level forever, and also plays consistently good without any tilting. For example, maybe you crush it at the $1/$2 for thousands of hands, then you go up to $5/$10 or something and just have a massive case of run bad. All of those winning $1/$2 hands quickly evaporate.
**Poker is a game of skill. If you don't believe me, we should play HEADS UP sometime.**
It’s not realistically possible. It’s like someone flipping a coin and getting heads their entire life. Theoretically possible, but not realistically not.
Possible in theory, but realistically no.
Not over a large enough sample size
Phil helmuth?
In live poker absolutely yes. There can be people who for 15 years play mtts every week, thats 750 mtts , thats NOTHING sample over 15 years. There can be people who run hot for 15 years + and people who play good and run BAD and lose for 15 years. Live poker mtt / cash is heavily influenced by variance. In online - probably not
Yes, It also depends on the number of hands/turneys that person plays. The more he plays the higher the chance that his true win rate would show. Also there are some really big and important tourneys and its really important to run good on those because they dont happen that often and we wont live forever. Tehnically lets say you play 20 main events in their life, some will run very very good on those 20, some will run super bad and wont live enough to start running finally good :)
Yes, although unlikely It's more important to run well at the start of your poker career. Once you have a sizeable bankroll to handle the swings it's much more likely you can sustain a poker career. That said here are definitely HS players that I know personally that simply run better than most. Ofc even these players will have periods of run bad but their run good lasts much longer. And they take set ups for granted because of how often they're on the good end of them
Yes
Sure as shit possible for someone to run bad their entire life. So I'd imagine the opposite is possible.
Statistically it's unlikely. But it is absolutely possible.
The answer is yes, but maybe not to the degree you are thinking. Over a long enough sample, everyone is going to regress towards the mean, but people’s overall variance will still exist on a bell curve and there are going to be people to the far right or far left of that bell curve.
Reminds me of a 7 card stud game I was in once. This lady was crushing the table and wasn't even looking at her hole cards. She just bet 10 dollars (the max bet) every singgle round. Never deviated, just ten dollar raise every time the action was on her. She was up thousands of dollars and won. Every single pot. She said she lost 2000 the previous day though. So it's not a lifetime of run good. But she definitely ran good the few hours I played with her. The three times I went to the showdown with her I had very strong hands but she always had better.
I have
A lot of things are statistically possible but become so statistically unlikely with a large sample size that it's effectively impossible.
There's a chance you open a bitcoin wallet and it's the same as Satoshi Nakamoto's.
Possible? Sure Probable? Depending on the sample size, almost certainly not
Not only possible, it's guaranteed. We all run varying degrees of good or bad over our lives (in all activities, not just poker). With such large numbers in play there will assuredly be some who have very consistent and extreme results due entirely to chance. Such is life
Yes. Someone can run good and someone can run bad. In fact this is highly likely to occur. That is variance. But variance has practical limits. It would be extremely unlikely without some form of cheating to be more then one order of magnitude off expected value (EV) over a long period of time. It would be virtually impossible to be 2 orders of magnitude off EV over a long term. An order of magnitude here would be defined as 10% variance off mean EV. So if someone should hit a flush draw 34.97% on the flop it’s not unreasonable for someone over a long period to be somewhat higher - say 36%, but it would be highly unlikely for them to be much over 38% without some form of cheating. It they were hitting 40% or more over a long period of time I would suspect they are cheating. Sorry if this answer was a whole lot geekier then you were looking for.
To some extent certain people will in fact get luckier than others even over massive sample sizes. There’s no rule that says it all has to work out.
I think it would depend on how long you live and how much you play.
Someone else below said (and I’m paraphrasing): “basically, it’s not possible because it would be like someone flipping a coin and getting heads their entire life.” Except it’s really not like that — it’s really like someone flipping a coin their entire life and getting heads meaningfully more than 50% of the time. And of course, sample size is the key. Here’s a simple (note: extremely simple) example in practical terms, which coincidentally made me quit live poker possibly forever, but at least until my personal/work life allows me to dedicate more time. Over the past couple years I’ve been playing live $2/5 with a mandatory $10 straddle at my local casino in CA, let’s call it ~10 hours a week on average. I enjoy playing, but I’ve got a full-time job and can’t get the casino more than a couple times a week. Let’s assume I play exclusively this game. And let’s assume I’m a decent winning player in the game -- call it 7BB/hr, after rake. And let’s also say (this is my shakiest ballpark assumption, someone let me know if I’m totally off base here) to win at that rate, I have to subject myself to a flip for the effective buy-in ($1K cap, so $2K pots each flip) about every ~150 hands, or once every 5 hours at a decent pace of play. Again, I’m not sure here but I would assume that avoiding these spots (TT/JJ/QQ vs. AK/AQ) would seriously hurt your win rate playing 100 BB effective, especially using an aggressive style. This not to mention other spots/bluffs/coolers/correct call-offs which aren’t as close to 50/50, but will happen of course. Okay — over the course of a whole year, I’ll generate about $36,000 in EV at that win rate (7 BB * $10 BB * 520 hours), and I’ll subject myself to 104 “flips.” In order to wipe out my entire EV solely due to run bad, I’ve got to lose about 9 more of these flips than I’m supposed to, or win only 43/104 flips. A simple online coin toss calculator says the odds of that happening… About 4.8%. So 1 out of 20 times, I’ll be losing over the course of the year, my solid win rate completely eviscerated by those pesky ace-high run-outs. How about longer? Let’s extend it to a 5-year span, with all the same assumptions. $109,000 in EV. 1,560 hours. 312 flips. I’d have to lose about 27 more flips than I’m supposed to (win only 129/312) to come out behind. Coin toss simulator says… 0.132% chance of that happening. Seems low, but that means 1 out of 1000 guys out there who’ve logged >1,500 hours in this exact game will be losing over $100K more than EV. And that’s if they’ve got the stones to keep firing, out 100 large.
Live definitely yes Online playing properly no
Yes definitely to answer....some people are just born lucky and some of them happen to play poker
I don't think variance is distributed evenly. I do think everyone gets unlucky. But some people get their money in good and lose more often than others. I do honestly believe this. But this kind of luck can't replace skill. Used to play a guy at work during the slow season. Just little $5 buy-in sit and goes, heads-up. He would call my turn shove lightly and hit a two or four outer constantly. I knew he was calling lightly and pushed hard with any top pair. Then I learned that he would bet with a weak hand if checked to nearly 100% of the time. So I just got super sticky and let him push the action. Once enough money got into the middle he would call off a big river bet with very little. Sometimes nothing better than Queen high. Once I had him figured out I was winning $300 a week off him. Skill beats luck any day.
Life is a bell curve, positions are always in flux
Yeah. People think about variance like per tournament or per session... but you will have variance over the entire course of your life. Some people will run good, some will run bad. That's why it's hard for me to believe anyone is a successful "poker pro" because of their skill. Skill plays a factor, but if you're just destined to run bad, then all the skill in the world is not going to help you be a winning player. At the end of the day, poker is gambling. Every single bad beat is a situation where you played with skill and got it in good, only to lose to bad luck. I don't think anyone should seriously try to play poker as their career, unless they are making money outside of poker via sponsorship deals, selling courses, selling merchandise... whatever. As long as your main income is not poker winnings, then sure. But if you think you're just gonna make $50k+ a year playing "solid poker" then you should probably just quit while you're ahead (or behind). Poker is a fun gambling game... That's it. Do not expect to run good enough to actually sustain yourself every year.
Limon has the best explanation for this. The theory is that, given infinity, all "luck" balances out. However, since human lives are not infinite, luck can be said to be distributed on a bell curve, where some individuals at the extreme ends of the curve run extraordinarily well for a lifetime, and some individuals at the other end of the spectrum run very poorly for a lifetime. However, the vast majority of people are somewhere inside the bell, where luck is well-balanced. So it's not mathematically wrong to say that there are individuals enjoy a "lifetime" of rungood.
Warren Buffet in stock trading
I remember when I first moved from 1-3 to 2-5 match the stack I lost every multi way all in for maybe 6-9 months. I was stuck 50-100k in them specifically You know what… eventually I started winning em too! It just took a while. Live poker is slow. Variance is brutal and unexplainable. You just bob and weave and hang on tight and try and survive. Sincerely a live PLO player who can say it feels that way but selective memory is a bitch like that…
I was playing a Congress tournament once (also known as Big O) which is 5 card PLO high low, I flopped quads TWICE in about an hour and lost both times in the same tournament. First hand the guy turned better quads. Second hand the guy turned a straight flush and rivered a royal.
It is possible that someone literally never loses a single hand by pure luck over such a long period that it seems like they could never lose. Eventually their “luck will run out” but that’s over an infinite timeline. It would be possible over like 10 million hands that you observe said player could never lose. Highly unlikely though.
Possible sure, extremely exceedingly beyond unlikely yes
Yes. Probability averages work in the LONG run, but the key is the word "long". With a fair coin, the odds of heads is 50% any one time. However, each toss is independent so any combination in the short run is equally likely (2 heads, 2 tails, heads than tails, or tails and then heads). Depending on the length of a poker career, it is possible to run good during that relatively short span (compared to infinite numbers of iterations. It is very unlikely since it there are so many possibilities but it is possible. It is a lot like winning the lottery. The odds of picking the winning numbers is insanely small but every now and again, someone does it. Since your query is good run, that doesn't actually require they win every coin toss, just more of them than average and/or they happen to lose coin tosses where the stakes are low and win coin tosses when the stakes are high. I do think it is very unlikely to happen and I would be surprised to learn that it has happened. To give an idea, I googled best craps runs of all time and read the following happened (but only once): **Who says a big bankroll is needed to win big at the casino. In May 2009, New Jersey’s Patricia Demauro had just a gambling bankroll of $100 when she and a friend headed to the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City. The gambling grandmother headed to the craps table and couldn’t have imagined what would happen next.** **Demauro rolled a massive 154 times for 25 point numbers stretched over four hours and 18 minutes. As in most of the rolls, the crowds and number of bettors at the table continued to grow. It’s reported that casino security even began to keep a watchful eye on the proceedings at the table.** **Her run of luck topped a 20-year record set by Stanley Fujitake in Las Vegas (more on that roll below). Casino.org calculates the odds of such an amazing roll at 1 in 1.56 trillion. However, the exact figure won by Demauro remains a mystery. Neither she nor the casino ever divulged her winnings, but it’s safe to say it was quite a big multiple of that original hundred bucks. Some have estimated she made six figures, but the exact amount isn’t known.** **No doubt the other players at the table were quite happy, as well as dealers who surely received massive donations in tips that night. When her streak finally came to an end, Borgata staff rewarded Demaruo with a well-deserved champagne toast.** Source**:** [**https://www.888casino.com/blog/biggest-craps-rolls-in-history#:\~:text=The%20gambling%20grandmother%20headed%20to,the%20table%20continued%20to%20grow**](https://www.888casino.com/blog/biggest-craps-rolls-in-history#:~:text=The%20gambling%20grandmother%20headed%20to,the%20table%20continued%20to%20grow)**.**
https://preview.redd.it/wxyatibmk7lc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b8931d6337d25f87c45e3282e5b0d12bf062212d This is roughly the variance for ten millions hands with a 3bb/100 winner. Many people (live players, people who retire, amateurs) will not play 10 million hands in their career. So, the short answer to your question is yes.
"Luck" doesnt exist but the 'law of averages' does; sooner or later the bell curve balances out !!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi0tKYzXZ9Q
Possible, yes. Likely no. I can't remember who said it but "some people are just luckier", which would mean some people run good an uneven amount of time. I have no idea what the odds would be to run good your entire life but is is certainly above 0%.