RIGGED SHUFFLER BS OF COURSE HE TOPDECKS THE ACE

**** variance, OK?

And I'm doing it, I'm reinstalling. **** me, too.

Variance is a big part of why skill is important...

Well how random is poker? Like, give some quantitative metric that illustrates how random it is, e.g. in Magic, the best players in the world win about 60% of the time; in Storybook Brawl, the best players will gain rating consistently till at least ~4500 or about top 100-200 on the ladder (I am not sure if getting higher involves grinding or just better play).

Is poker more random than:

- MtG?
- Hearthstone?
- Bridge?
- Pokemon Netbattle?
- Chess? (haha)

in poker, best players in the world all have positive win rate graphs in a near-linear line going up over time. They don't have 100% win rate per session but they are positive over time. Cash game players (grinders) have an average bb rate per hour they tend to average. Multi-table tournament players (the softest fields in poker) generally cash in one out of four tournaments (the top players anyway).

Your concept of 'random' is showing a fundamental misunderstanding or appreciation of variance and how mitigating that risk is not only possible but essential to being at least an average player.



Anyway, I much prefer players think the game is luck based cuz if they think it's skill based, the fish stop playing completely thinking they are out-classed. I much rather they think they are simply unlucky and that I am lucky sometimes, that's all.

In fact my favourite thing ever being told at a tournament after scooping a pot was, "hmmmm.ok. Not good, just lucky."

perfect. I totally agree. See you next week.

Well Magic is random, you can be the best player in the world with the best deck and still lose to mana screw. That's why top players only have 60% win rate (it's apparently 65% at GP day 1 level). You still go "positive over time" of course, because any win % that is higher than 50% is enough to go "positive over time". You can also argue it's a skill-based game, since in any game where the top players can consistently win more than 50% of the time is arguably skill-based, but it's still 60% win rate.

For illustration purposes here is a screenshot of the leaderboards from another game I play. The game mode is 5v5, but you can queue at most with two players. The first column on the right is the elo, the second is the number of wins and the third is the number of losses.



I don't know how many of these top-ranked players are solo queuing and how many only duo (and queue during peak hours when the opposition is on average softer), but it should be pretty clear that this game is less random than Magic. 75% win rate over a hundred matches is plausible.

The question is how random is poker? The only thing in your post that touches on it is



I don't know how often top Magic players cash in tournaments, but 1/4 does not seem like a high rate.

top 10% of the field gets paid. Hundreds of players in these tournaments. 1 in 4 is pretty good.

anyway, i'm only talking about poker, not magic. There's no randomness in poker, just standard variance which is fully explainable through mathematics and statistics

This is Randy "Nanonoko" Lew's graph. It is the most absurd thing I've ever seen.

Polk's head's up graph is super linear too.

What game is Lew playing there? Do you know? That's gotta be cash game for it to be that straight, crazy. I've only seen a handful like that.

If you have a 60% winrate, then for every dollar you risk, you make $1.20.

Now, multiply that by 100k hands. 200k. 300k hands, etc.

Most good players can generate a winrate of about 8-15 bb/hr playing live, at reasonable stakes. In a 5/10 game, that works out to between $80 per hour to $150 per hour. Then you just add volume.

Winrates on a per hand basis is much smaller playing online, because the fields are tougher, but suddenly you can massively increase volume. That's why most online players try to get about 5 bb/100 hands, then just play multiple tables to try to jam 500 hands per hour, or 25 bb/hr.

Any game where variance matters, you just eliminate variance with volume. It doesn't matter if you run way below expectation for 10k hands, because it's a tiny sample. You just get more volume in and you inevitably revert to your standard winrate. At about 500 hours of playing live or maybe 50k hands online, you probably have some idea of how you're playing.

I think it's $500 sit-n-gos, where he just plays 10 at a time or something like that. His cash chart is choppier but still trending way up.

wow, that's crazy linear for sit-n-gos, but those pay top 30% so it's much 'easier' to cash i guess

And everything starts to flatten at a million hands.

it's nice to have you back Vert. Hope you stay

U are going to scare this ****!

Lol love you Cucho

You’re my Diamond in the rough

That doesn't say anything. If you win 60% of the time (as in Magic) and you play enough, then your net winnings are always going to go up. Same goes for the net number of wins. Put another way, can you name a game which you can win more than 50% of the time, and yet your net winnings does not display this same trend? Heck, if this trend is an argument that the game is not random, then you could argue that rock-paper-scissors is not random (there are people who win more than 50% of the time at that game, since they recognize non-random patterns from other players) even though a perfect RNG is unbeatable at that game.

If anything my takeaway is that poker does not need much mental effort because you can play five tables at the same time (try playing 5 Magic games at the same time without timing out).

Try playing 5 tables of poker at the same time. Don't confuse "people are great at poker" with "everyone is great at poker".

And if you are winning anything 60% of the time, then it isn't random. It's beatable. Poker being beatable is proof it is a skill game. Over millions of hands, if poker were just luck, literally everyone would be winning between like 50.1% to 49.9% of the time. 10% above expectation is a massive deviation from the mean, DUCY?

Best post in months!!