Poker: How do you figure out if it's luck or skill?

[Barkeep49]

At the start of this summer I decided I was going to learn how to play limit poker. I had seen people making money, I had some time on my hands (thank you job as a teacher) and so I decided that I like poker and it was a good way to kill what can otherwise be an extremely boring time. I play about 5000 hands and am up around 15 BB, so essentially I figure I'm a breakeven sort of player. At this point I figure I've got a little skill, but not enough to really making the grind worthwhile in any sense, so it's time to get serious. I do a lot of reading on how to play limit, and in particular low limit poker. And so of course in the last 3000 hands I'm down around 100 BB. Now I want to say that the problem is with me. That I have all this new knowledge and I'm simply not applying it correctly (my suspicion is that while before I was playing preflop incorrectly and postflop correctly, the reverse is now true), but I also know from what I read that this could simply be the dreaded variance. I don't want to go out and try and "fix" my poker game if I'm not really doing things wrong, but I also don't want to keep playing incorrectly. Any advice?

[vtbub]

How tight are you?

[Barkeep49]

I don't have my stats right in front of me, but I'm currently playing about 22% preflop with about 11% PFR, and am going to showdown about 28% which I win around 54%. That's all rough estimates mind you as PT is at home.

[vtbub]

those are good

[Butch2522]

playing limit has nothing to do with skill cause you cant bluff anyone, if u want to see if its skill or luck play no limit, it helps tune ur skills you have. it ur playing against someone with alot of money, with limit, he will stay in to see more cards with a mid to low pair on the board jsut because it onyl cost him alittle.

[sooner333]

it ur playing against someone with alot of money, with limit, he will stay in to see more cards with a mid to low pair on the board jsut because it onyl cost him alittle.

And if you play correctly you will win money from him in the long run.

[Lathum]

it seems to me you are maybe playing to many hands and just calling to much. In limit poker you should raise preflop and try to A. build the pot and B. drive out marginal hands.

I would try playing less hands and investing more in the hands you play.

[Butch2522]

u really want to raise preflop to drive out marginal hands, thats a big part of the raise preflop for me atleast, so i dont get beat by shitty hands, but u allways got someone out there who will play anything, so while your playing u got to watch how everyone else plays and raises

[Toddzilla]

NEVER let 'em see the flop for free

[Radii]

In low limit poker you can limp a lot from the right positions, you don't always raise any hand you play. If 4 people limp, you want to limp with a lot of hands like suited connectors and low pocket pairs.


If you want, post a lot of detailed pokertracker stats here. Look for your agression numbers, in addition to just your preflop hands.

Sort your hands by biggest winner and biggest loser, both in overall money and BB/hand and post them. Look to see if you've had any weird hands in those big winners/losers that skew your results.

Another thing you can do is look at your hand distribution... you should get AA once every 200 hands, etc. I did this once when I was on a shitty streak and I found that over a 1500 hand period I was getting sklansky group 1 hands like 20% less than I should have or some strange thing.

4000 hands or so is a blip on the radar but at the same time, a 100 BB downswing is nothing to sneeze at, it could certainly just be bad luck but often some bad luck leads to bad play.

[MJ4H]

playing limit has nothing to do with skill cause you cant bluff anyone, if u want to see if its skill or luck play no limit, it helps tune ur skills you have. it ur playing against someone with alot of money, with limit, he will stay in to see more cards with a mid to low pair on the board jsut because it onyl cost him alittle.
I wish I had the energy to dismantle this. Nevermind, I'm actually glad I don't.

[vtbub]

What tables do you play at, and where?

[sooner333]

Yeah, sometimes you want to play marginal hands. If you get a good feel for the table you can limp in out of position knowing that more times than not either it will be an unraised pot OR the raise will be called by all, making pot odds the same. We're talking low limit here. By marginal I mean suited connecters, Ace-X suited, maybe even hands like 7-9 or 7-5 suited. It just depends on the table. I consider low limit poker to be a better prospective hand game because of the looseness and you can get the pot odds to make them worthwhile plays, sometimes from almost any position since after the flop you can just fold them.

[korme]

NEVER let 'em see the flop for free
wurd

[GoldenEagle]

playing limit has nothing to do with skill cause you cant bluff anyone, if u want to see if its skill or luck play no limit, it helps tune ur skills you have. it ur playing against someone with alot of money, with limit, he will stay in to see more cards with a mid to low pair on the board jsut because it onyl cost him alittle. You can sit at my table any day of the week.

Seriously, poker is all about paying attention to your situation in front of you. It is harder to do online, but it is possible. Get a program like PokerTracker to help out. However, keep up with reads on your table. You should learn something every hand. It is demanding but is worth it. I consider myself a casino. My patrons are going to get lucky and hit their number on the roulette wheel. But in the long term I will win.

Now, if only my EFT will come in so I can get to bonus whoring.

[Barkeep49]

Thanks to all for the advice. I went on a semi-vacation and took the time off from playing poker despite having the chance to play against people who I know to be inferior to me. Came back and decided to give the 25 max NL PS tables a go and have had some nice success and am now up $25 (although I have been two tabling it) after around 250 hands, and with the exception of one bad play with KK that I should have let go, feel like I've been playing good poker and making good reads. However, I'd still like to fix my limit game. Here is a PT export which presents a slightly different picture than above, as I was doing that without PT in front of me.

Total Hands: 2698
Vol $: 18.53
Vol from SB: 31.33
Folded SB to Steal: 73.68
Folded BB to Steal: 59.26
Fold BB to Steal HU: 57.89

Att to Steal Blinds: 12.12 (16 times out of 132)
Steal Success: No Flop (31.25) Fold (18.75) Ww/oSD (56.25) WSD (25) W$SD (75)

Won $ When Saw Flop: 29.95
WtSD: 35.1
Won $ at SD: 48.44
Raised Pre-Flop 5.37
Limp/Call Reraise PF: .04 (1/2698)

First Action on Flop after PFR:
Raise 10.34 Bet (48.97) Call (11.03) Check (12.41) C/R (1.38) Fold (.69) NF/NA (15.17)

PF: Raise 5.33 Bet 0 Call 15.26 Check 5.94 Fold 73.47
F: Raise 3.94 Bet 22.04 Call 18.45 Check 32.95 Fold 22.62 AF: 1.41
T: Raise 1.31 Bet 26.49 Call 22.39 Check 32.84 Fold 16.98 AF: 1.24
R: Raise 5.22 Bet 17.75 Call 24.02 Check 40.73 Fold 12.27 AF: .96

I can do the bottom stats if it'll be informative. Again I appreciate the words so far.

[TredWel]

VPIP is good, and that's the most important stat IMO. VPIP from SB seems low, but it's not terrible.

Couple of things strike me here. First of all, PFR of 5.37 is not terrible, but pretty low. Chances are you're not raising with a few of the more borderline raising hands, or making position raises before the flop. My PFR hovers around 8, and others go even higher.

Your post-flop AFs are low, and I mean waaaaaay too low. You're probably not protecting your hand after the flop, or value betting weak made hands, which you have to do at the lower limits. Your river AF is almost criminally low. You are certainly not value betting enough on the river. It's obvious that postflop is your biggest leak.

Basically, I'd classify you as a rock. Smart enough to know to play only good hands, but not willing to risk the variance necessary to push the small edges or protect your weak made hands. You've made some good first steps, but need to know when to hit the gas.

I strongly suggest reading Small Stakes Hold 'Em, by Ed Miller. It's not a beginner's book, but you look to have a solid foundation of the basics, and are ready for the next step.

[Aardvark]

And if you play correctly you will win money from him in the long run.
Exactly. Back in college, playing nickle ante, quarter limit, we routines took a millionaire to the cleaners (ok, $20) nearly every time he played.

[LoneStarGirl]

Living with a 'professional' poker player, I come across this question a lot. How come we he loses its all because of terrible luck, but when he wins its because he is such a great poker player? Do you other 'professional' poker players feel this same way?

[albionmoonlight]

Do you other 'professional' poker players feel this same way?
In my experience, the good ones don't.

(N.B. I say this, not as a good player myself, but simply as someone who gets a sense of who wins and who does not in the long run at poker).

[Subby]

heh - I had a response all typed out and then I realized this was from 4 months ago.

hopefully things have been running well.

LoneStarGirl - I am no professional, but I think good players recognize that luck plays a huge part in poker. The key is to put yourself in situations where the odds are in your favor - i.e., always get your money in with the best of it.

If he is always getting his money in with the best of it, then statistically, when he loses, it seems like bad luck because the long shot has won.

That's why it's fun to gamble it up so you don't have to be so uptight and conflicted about losing ;)

[JeffW]

The long run is very long--5000 hands is nothing. 50,000 hands is nothing. It takes much longer for your winrate to converge to its true value. Likewise, a 100 bb downswing is no picnic, but it's meaningless.

P.S. Your pfr and AFs are too low(i.e. you're too passive before and after the flop).

[Poli]

Reading this thread, there's a lot I don't know about poker.

[MJ4H]

50,000 hands is not nothing. You can get a good idea of how well you play in 50,000 hands. The deviation will be large, but I wouldn't call 50,000 hands "nothing."

[Icy]

Reading this thread, there's a lot I don't know about poker.Reading this thread, there is nothing i know about poker.
I know just the basics, enought to play with friends, but for sure not enought to play it seriously. I also don't know shit about all the different ways of playing poker.

Sometimes i think i should try to learn, specially when i promote poker rooms in my online casino websites. But in my casinos experience, from watching the stats of thousands of players throught a few years, i have seen some guys (tracking numbers for me) to play more than 24 hours without stop, to earn a lot (and i mean over $20,000 in a cuple of days) and to end losing insane amounts of money.

All that is what makes me afraid of learning poker, to become one of the loosing tracking numbers on another webmaster stats system. Of course is not the same to playfor example slots vs the casino than poker vs other players, but i'm still afraid.

[albionmoonlight]

Reading this thread, there is nothing i know about poker.
I know just the basics, enought to play with friends, but for sure not enought to play it seriously. I also don't know shit about all the different ways of playing poker.

Sometimes i think i should try to learn, specially when i promote poker rooms in my online casino websites. But in my casinos experience, from watching the stats of thousands of players throught a few years, i have seen some guys (tracking numbers for me) to play more than 24 hours without stop, to earn a lot (and i mean over $20,000 in a cuple of days) and to end losing insane amounts of money.

All that is what makes me afraid of learning poker, to become one of the loosing tracking numbers on another webmaster stats system. Of course is not the same to playfor example slots vs the casino than poker vs other players, but i'm still afraid.
It is good that you are afraid, but that does not mean that you should not enjoy yourself. I think that there is a very very small subset of people in the world who have the proper skill set to be successful professional gamblers (poker, card counting, sports betting, etc.). Of course, a sports-sim community will attract a disproportinate number of those people, which is why it seems like half the people on this board are profitable gamblers.

For the rest of us, though, gambling can be fun. As long as you view it as a recreation, and are willing to lose a certain amount of money doing it (just as you would spend to go to the movies, or spend a week seeing shows in New York), then I see no problem with it.

I lose money gambling, but never more than I expect to.

[JonInMiddleGA]

As long as you view it as a recreation, and are willing to lose a certain amount of money doing it (just as you would spend to go to the movies, or spend a week seeing shows in New York), then I see no problem with it.I lose money gambling, but never more than I expect to.

What he said (plus or minus 10% on the expected losses part).

[Donnie Baker]

I've had a run of bad luck lately (or bad play - though I would consider losing AK to a 77 after the flop was AAK and he went all in, to get running 7's, to be bad luck ;) ).

I've been doing mostly tournaments. Is it better to do that, or actually do the regular tables? Oh, this is all online. What entry level would you consider a good level. I've been staying cheap with teh 10 dollar buy in tournaments but keep getting miffed when I lose to people betting hands that they have no reason to bet and then catching major luck on the river, or even last 2 cards for that matter (like losing to those stupid 4 card straights, or whatever they are 'officially' called in pokerese).

Oh, all of my questions are based on no limit since I hate playing limit because I always lose what should have been a great hand to some idiot who stayed in to the max raises with nothing and lucks out with a straight after betting their 3,7 (or something like that).

[JeffW]

50,000 hands is not nothing. You can get a good idea of how well you play in 50,000 hands. The deviation will be large, but I wouldn't call 50,000 hands "nothing."

You can get a good idea of how well you play, but you cannot get an accurate representation of your mythical "true winrate". After 50k hands, you can only be ~95% sure you're within 2.5 BB/100 or so of your true winrate assuming a SD/100=17(most full ring limit holdem players fall close to that number).

I play >50,000 hands a month. When you play enough hands you will realize how long the long run really is in poker.

[Maple Leafs]

P.S. Your pfr and AFs are too low(i.e. you're too passive before and after the flop).
Could someone post (or direct us to) a quick explanation of what those stats mean, and what a "good" number would be?

[Vince]

I believe pfr = pre-flop raise, but I could be wrong :)