Luck is one of my favorite subjects.

Poker is subjective also know as situational. There are mathematical correct plays to be made based upon EV and implied odds is one of the factors to be considered. Chasing a flush is good as long as you have the right pot odds. But, you can miss your flush draw 18 times in a row and make them 5 times in a row.

Pot equity for AA is only about 35% to 85% depending on the number of callers.

This intellectual exercise is great for my game - need to weed out the leaks. As said in the 'Serious Poker' book; thinking about your game away for the table helps you improve your game.

But, actually trying to define a hand or a series of hands a lucky or unlucky in a random universe is not easy at all.

Chaos theory as explained in Jurassic Park (cool movie). It is a random world full of random events.

As long as you are not being cheated and the game is fair then "shit happens" more than we would like but without an explanation such as "luck".

I believe in luck but I also believe that it can not be controlled by wearing you lucky shirt.

My definition of luck is after all the cards are dealt and I have made my hand I think that I was lucky. If I missed my hand I was unlucky.

The label of luck is assigned after the hand is over.

My 2 cents.

The rake always wins. But so do the bonus dollars.

I lost money last week at the tables, due to some bad luck combined with some tilt induced by extra-poker activities in the world around me that pi$$ed me off. But the bonus dollars from Party put me in the black for the week. This week I'm playing better and will clear more bonuses.

CJ, go get more of those bonus dollars. It'll cushion your bad luck streaks.

Well, this thread has gotten so long that I haven't read through all of it. But I did want to say on the 10k hands: It's very possible imo to have that number of hands strongly influenced by bad luck.

I'm definitely on a week-long run of it myself and am in fact pretty proud of not tilting during the process. BUT... I've noticed that my starting hand criteria have loosened up signficantly (only to a little over 20% guys--so don't think I'm that bad), and I think I have bled away some chips unnecessarily.

There are also some grey areas that I need to work on and on which I'm going to try to get going in some separate threads here.

I will also say this: The more experience you have (and I'm at least getting there now), the more confident you can be in the fact that the luck will turn back. And I say this having lost right around $2,500 in my last 30-40 hours of play with really only one clearly bad play (moved in on AA after my big flop bet got minimum raised--I didn't believe the set, but he had it) although certainly a few controversial ones on which I either had serious outs or a monster that almost no one would even think of laying down (boats against tight players where my boat loses). I've never had anywhere close to a week that horrible (including relativization due to size of game), and I do that there's at least SOME unnecessary bleeding involved in there (and if that accounts for $300 of it, it's not at all insignificant, although it may seem to be).

What you absolutely MUST do during these phases is play correctly!!! I really think we're probably talking about 100k hands before you have a pretty accurate reading on your win rates. And a BIG part of that win-rate is going to be determined by how you dealt with the horror stories (not tilting!).

twelver,

As I said earlier, you need to write down what you KNOW is a mistake. If you end up making a call let s say 2:1 to chase the flush, in a tight table, with good players, where you dont have implied odds because they will fold if you hit, then u know you played it badly and should put the amount in the Stupidity losses section.

As I say, what is an obvious mistake for players like Ice, Kenny,Ais, droqqa, MG, (all others...) isnt probably so clear to a fish like me and for that I wont put it in the SL section. The point is trying to spot the times you DO lose money in plays and moves you KNOW are incorrect.

AlexMR.

Well said and Lou K. has written several articles on this subject and in computer sims. luck still plays a facter after some huge number of hands - I forget, but a life time like a 1,000,000 or so.

The short run is a very long run. Some people have played at a jackpot table for 20 years and not been on a jackpot table when it hit. My wife had two just nine days apart after playing for 2 years.

Lucky.

I guess getting QQ UTG+2 and the BB having KK could be considered bad luck? What do you think?

I guess that I could have gotten away from it if I had folded pre-flop to his re-raise? But, can you always fold QQ in this spot when the BB re-raises you?

There are only two hands that are better pre-flop. AA and KK.

The lower cards hit the board. Now what?

Well, I lost all my small stack that is what. Some bad luck and some bad play.

Three spades hit and I had the he did not have any spades. He bet the flop and I pushed hoping for another spade if he had AA or KK. He considered it for a bit and then called. I had 11 outs.

No spade - his KK held up.

Sometimes we are lucky. Live NLHE game.

I flopped a set of 8's and he flopped a set of Q's - damn. I have a 5% change to win.

We are all in on the flop.

Then the turn was an 8 and I had quads - cool I am going to win. Now he has a 2.3% chance to win.

Then the river was a Queen and I lost - Great --- JACKPOT.

Me -

Borad -

Him -

Sure gald I did not fold to his preflop re-raise.

Now I have about $35,000 mad money for poker.

Was the bad beat jackpot 35 gorillas? Not too shabby...