All You Need is Luck ?

When non-playing people find out that you play poker semi-seriously, I am often asked the question "Hindi ba swertihan lang yan ?".


To which of course I vigorously reply the negative, and give an answer similar to the following "Actually its more skill than luck, blah blah blah" and then I try to explain about probabilities and pot odds and bankroll management. After about 30 seconds, I get the glazed eyed look that tells me he's pretty much lost interest in the topic. So I tell him how much I've won so far, and he then perks up and is now asking me about details on how he can try it.


Of course, I gleefully help with the details, even volunteering to transfer some money to help him get started. In my mind, its my way of contributing to the growth of online Philippine poker. Getting rich fishes into the ocean is not a bad idea if you know what I mean.


But kidding aside, is it really all luck ?


Well, we all know its not. But its certainly a very big part of it. Case in point is the recent Pokerstars Sunday Million. I managed to catch the replay of the final table & the headsup match between hockeystud and dunk.


When they were down to 2, they agreed to chop the pot based on chip count so that one got $136,000 and the other $112,000 (rough figures). They then played for the final $30,000. Even before the headsup, there were numerous bad beats from one end of the table to the other.


Huge Payday. More than 5 million pesos for each of them for roughly 12 hours of work. I know the APPT winner took down $179,000. But remember this one is only a $215 buy in tourney


The interesting thing is if you check out their stats in official poker rankings for the pokerstars site and take out the win. You see that Hockeystud is a marginally winning player at around +4K. Dunk on the other hand was a marginally losing player at about -$3K.


You will also see that both these guys play a lot of the big online tourneys and the swings in their bankroll is quite large. But note that before the big 6 figure payday, they weren't really winning that much considering the buy-ins they were putting in.


Of course this is only for Pokerstars, and the data is limited from late 2005 to recent and it may not be complete. Also from the data, they appear to be regular MTT players and the variance is huge if you play exclusive MTTs. No SNGs for these guys if you believe sharkscope.


But I think you get my point and its certainly something to think about ........


One lucky night plus a good bankroll is all it takes ?? Heheh .....