Pokerwiner.com → Within poker principles
The sequence of heads coming up many times in a row is directly analogous to the poker player making many good hands in a row. Unless you believe that for these coin toss sequences the chance of the coin coming up a head on the eleventh toss is greater than 50 percent, you will lack logical consistency if you believe the player who has made many good hands in a row is more likely than normal (i.e. more likely than statistical probability ) to make a good hand on the next deal.
Does this mean that rushes don’t actually exist? No. Players do sometimes make a high proportion of winning hands over a period of time. My point is simply that you can never accurately say you are on a rush or that you are playing your rush. You can only say that you have been on a rush over some time period in the immediate past. You cannot predict, better than chance, any continuation of that rush. Therefore, to chance anything about your strategy based on the notion that you are “on ” a rush that you expect to continue is ridiculous. This does not mean that you should never make a strategic adjustment based on having been on a rush, and as a result of how you believe your opponents are therefore, responding to you. That is a different issue.
“I’LL TAKE THAT SEAT WHEN HE LEAVES!”
Another illusion stemming from a lack of appreciation of randomness involves the belief that if you’re “running bad” it can be worth changing seats in the hope that that will change the quality of cards you’re getting. The same notion may take the form of believing that if a player who has had a big win leaves the poker game, it is worth taking his seat in the hope that the seat will continue to be dealt many winning hands. Similarly a player who has had a good streak may continue to sit in the same seat everyday, harboring the assumption that the seat is “lucky” for him. The notion that you can identify a “hot ” seat is not much different from the idea of being on a rush. It is another idea which assumes an ability to predict the future better than chance.
Imagine a large field in which sit 100 poker tables, each with 10 seats. Now imagine that 1,000 people are recruited to sit in these seats. Each is given a coin to toss over and over. Each person’s job is just to sit in his seat and flip his coin continuously, stopping only for necessary breaks. They are to continue with this task for eight hours a day, for two months. Lets say they average seven hours of tossing per day, and complete 30 tosses per minute. Over 62 days that’s 781,200 tosses per person.
Somehow you record the results of each person’s tosses. Somewhere near the 40 day mark you happen to spot several seats containing tosses who have just had their coins come up heads over 75 times out of their last 100 tosses. If you were now to try to pick some seats containing tosses who are going to toss a disproportionately high number of heads in their next 100 tosses, should you pick one of the ones you’ve spotted?
If you understood the coin toss analogy I applied to rushes, then it should be clear to you that it doesn’t matter what seat you pick. If you were to believe that the tossers you’ve spotted are the best picks, then you would once again have to believe that something has changed in their coins making them now more than 50 percent likely to come up heads on a given toss. Notice once again that this coin toss fantasy is analogous to the poker cards being dealt to those 1,000 seats. Various sorts of streaks will occur at various seats. But it is not accurate to say that one of these streaks is happening, only that it has happened in the immediate past. In fact, the notion that you should switch to the seat of a player who has been winning because that seat may continue to get good cards is like saying that you can take over another player’s rush by replacing him in the same seat.
The rush notion is fallacious to begin with, and so is this one. Again, however, this is not to say that there could be no valid reason for such a seat change. If you contend that you should move to a seat because of how other players are perceiving that seat, because they are intimidated by it perhaps, you at least have a certain logic to your argument. I don’t happen to think it’s an idea with much weight, but it is not the same thing as the “hot seat ” notion.
“I WON’T PLAY WHILE HE’S DEALING!”
As you might have guessed by now the idea that certain dealers deal you more (or fewer) winning hands than others is just another variation on the same theme. This times picture a field containing 1,000 dealers. But instead of dealing cards each is flipping a coin. Again each flips his coin continuously for a long time.
Now suppose that you stand in front of each dealer for 100 tosses. That’s 1,000 dealers for 100 tosses each. During your times in front of these out of 100 that the coin comes heads. Now it takes no knowledge of statistics, only common sense, to realize that out of the 1,000 dealers a few will toss a disproportionate number of heads, and a few will toss a disproportionate number of tails.
Some will toss over, say, 65 heads, while some toss that many tails. But would you be willing to lay odds that one of those who tossed lots of heads is going to toss another head on his next toss? This is just a person tossing a coin! You should be able to see that the next toss has the same 50 percent chance as always of being a head. It is the same with cards dealt. You sit through a large number of half stretches with various dealers and, once you look back on these stretches, some dealers will have had to deal you a disproportionate number of poker winners, others a disproportionate number of losers. So if you are not willing to lay odds on the coin toss, you should harbor no expectation that certain dealers are going to deal you more, or fewer, winning hands.
ENERGY WASTED ON ILLUSIONS
For some readers the points made in this essay will have been ridiculously obvious. Others, however, will still maintain that they can tell when they’re on a rush, or which seat is currently “hot ”, or which dealers they must avoid. In all honesty, as a serious poker player, I hope that a great many players continue to focus on these illusions. For by doing so they invest their energy in useless, sometimes costly pursuits rather than in what really matters at the poker table: The quality of their play. This is one of the many elements which keep the games beatable for players who invest their energy more wisely.
"The Best Player I' ve Ever Seen " / The Hit and Run Follies / An Illusory Winner /
On Randomness, Rushes, Hot Seats, and Bad Luck Dealers / Bad Beat? Think Again
Why Learn to Beat Tougher Games? / Practicing Game Preservation
Short-Handed Play: Don’t Miss out / How I Learned Poker: Part I
How I Learned Poker : Part II