Eureka!
Ever had something in your mind just click? This will seem obvious to any regular profitable poker player, but give me the luxury of happiness that having something dawn on me without outsider help brings. Years ago, people in the street were confronted by a naked screaming middle aged man, though traumatic as it may have been, they were witnessing an epiphany, one that did not affect them, as Fb = pgyA = pgV doesn’t exactly put food on the table, but an epiphany of eventual significance.
Although fully robed, I too came about sudden logical insight in the way poker and money work around each other, and though this may have been said a thousand times by a thousand people through a thousand different mediums, humour me in allowing me to write what I have ‘discovered’.
Poker is a game of skill and luck, after calculating all probabilities and psychology that is relevant to the hand, the correct decision is to be made, and the process is to be repeated for each betting round. Once the correct decision is made, luck, which is incalcuable, is added to the equation. As the sample size of the hands increases, and if the amount of skill added to the equation remains at a constant maximum, eventually luck will be negligible. Because of this, adding tables is profitable to the point in which your skill level decreases, as more tables = more hands, more hands negate luck. And profits will only be affected when skill is reduced, as luck stays the same variable per hand.
Hmm, I’ll ponder on that for a while.
I’m going back through your blog now that I’ve had some experience playing my computer (Hoyle Casino 2009). Now I can appreciate your insightful quote much more.
At this stage I’m largely experimenting with just how tight/loose to play against the computer by choosing the quality of my starting hands based on position. I’m putting off doing much odds calculation, but I know that will be beneficial.
The paradox in your statement is that at THIS stage in our development, the amount of skill is NOT constant. It makes it rather interesting. How much is success/failure based on skill vs. luck? Is a bad run because of mistakes or bad luck? Is my winning a reason to feel good about my development or am I getting overconfident?