Top 10 NBA Players: Part 2

As promised, here is is the 2nd part of my top10 NBA players of last season:

5. Kevin Durant

       Led the league in scoring for the 2nd consecutive year (27.7) and despite Lebron's claims that he could win the scoring title ever year, Durant is the best scorer in the NBA today (Anthony is a close 2nd). He can shoot from virtually anywhere on the floor, hes too quick for any power forwards, and he can shoot right over most SF/SG. He shot 46% from the field, which given the difficulty of he shots he takes, is pretty impressive. He's also one of the best FT shooters in the league (88%) and gets to the line more than anyone but Howard (9 FTA per game). Plus, I think he can probably bench 185lb now at least one time and he'll no longer be blown away by strong wind gusts (though a shove from Randolph sill will still send him flying). I went back and forth between Durant and Howard, but Durant has the ultimate tie-breaker: dropping 66 in a game at Rucker this summer:

4. Dwayne Wade

                                                    Image taken from picturepush.com
   
         Even after adding Lebron and Bosh, Wade averaged 25.5 PPG (4th in the league) on a very impressive 50% from the field. Besides Tony Parker (51.6%), I don't think there's is a guard in the league who gets into the lane more easily and gets more easy scores. He's was also among the league's best in steals (1.5/game) and is one of the best rebounding guards in the game. Last season he averaged 6.4 RPG and finished 4th in rebounding rate (behind superstars Mike Miller, Landry Fields, and Q. Richardson) among  all guards. Wade also finished 3rd in Hollinger's player efficiciency rating (PER) and 6th in hoopsstats.com's efficiency rating. Plus, if the commercials are true, he leads the league in average number of times getting up from a fall (1.143 get ups for each fall, don't think anyone is breaking that record).

3. Dirk Nowitski 

                                                          Image taken from sinussister.com
   
  Over the past couple seasons, Dirk has drastically altered my opinion of him (I'm sure he'll be happy to hear!) from fantastic shooting 7 footer to fantastic shooting 7 footer who can also drive a little bit. I think he's become a much more versatile scorer over the past 4-5 seasons and it makes him much more difficult to guard. While last year his PPG were down from 25 to 23, his shooting percentage was up (51.7% versus 48.1%). While this improvement is probably mostly due to his teammates being better so he didn't have to take as many difficult shots, there is no denying he had a fantastic season. In addition to being top 10 in points, he was also top 10 n FT% (89.2%), PER,  and hoopstats efficiency rating. He also won his first title and by denying the villains of the NBA their first title, made it one of the most memorable seasons of my lifetime.


2. Derrick Rose 

                                                    Image taken from thesportsbank.net

   
     When the Bulls were debating whether to take Derrick Rose or Michael Beasley with the #1 pick of the 2008 draft, I was vocally championing for Beasley to anyone who would listen. I admit I may have been wrong on that one. Rose made huge leaps in 2010 improving in virtually every statistical category (PPG, APG, SPG, BPG, RPG). While his scoring improvement was pretty dramatic (25.0 up from 20.8), I think the most significant difference in his game was his ability to get to and convert from the line. Last season he averaged 6.9 FT/game and made 85.8% of those versus just 4.3 and 76.6% the year before.

The biggest knock on Derrick is that his efficiency ratings aren't as high as most of the players on this list. According to hoopsstats.com, he is 14th in efficiency and Hollinger PER has him at 9th. This is largely due to his relatively low FG% and his relatively poor assist-to-turnover ratios. I think these can easily be explained away by his role on the Bulls. Since the Bulls don't have a second player who can create his own shot, Derrick is often left trying to beat entire defenses on his own. This means he gets fewer easy scoring opportunities than almost any superstar in the NBA and also will have more turnovers as he needs to have the ball in his hands such a large percentage of the time. The same reasons his efficiency ratings are low are the same reasons that he is the league MVP. He is simply more important to the Bulls than any other superstar is to their team. Hopefully, the addition of a good outside shooter (Hamilton) will take some pressure off Rose and improve his efficiency as a player.

 1. Lebron James 

            As much as I hate Lebron and the Heat (and I think it was a huge cop-out for Lebron to join Miami), LBJ is hands-down the best player in the NBA.  He led the league in PER (27.34) for the fourth season in a row and was 3rd in hoopsstats efficiency rating (slightly behind Howard and K.Love). He was 2nd in scoring (26.7) , led the league in assists for non-PGs (7),  and was the 2nd best rebounding SF with 7.5 RPG (behind Gerald Wallace). He was also top 10 in SPG (1.57)  and led the league in triple-doubles (4). He's probably the best passing forward since Larry Bird and can take over a game like nobody since Jordan. He once scored 29 of the Cav's last 30 against the Pistons in a game 5 and just last season, he scored 10 straight to send the Heat to the Conference Finals.

It's scary to think that he is already the most complete player in the NBA and he's not even a great shooter. If he reaches his potential, he will go down as one of the best 5 players of all time.


Hope this gets everyone excited for the start of the NBA season. Let's hope someone (Bulls) can stop the evil Heat again this year!

  

Top 10 NBA Players of 2010-2011

In honor of the NBA season avoiding complete cancellation and opening on Christmas day (!!!), I figured I would switch it up and make a non-poker related post. Instead, I am going to engage in one of my favorite activities: making a top10 list.  Here are my thoughts on the10 best NBA players of the 2010-2011 season:

Honorable Mention: Kevin Love

  

            Kevin Love has to be the most underrated player in the league because let’s be honest, his game is boring. It consists mainly of getting in insanely good rebounding position, grabbing offensive (and defensive) boards,  using his ridiculously thick body to prevent taller players from blocking his shots, and then finally making a layup. While he may suffer from Tim Duncan Disease (being so boring that nobody cares how great a player you are), he did lead the league in virtually every rebounding category, averaging 15.2 RPG and 4.5 offensive RPG. Granted, when you’re rebounding for the likes of Wesley Johnson and Corey Brewer, you will get plenty of rebounding opportunities, but Love was also 3^rd in the league in rebounding rate (behind Reggie Evans and Marcus Camby). The man had a ridiculous 53 consecutive double doubles last year including 31 and 31 in a game, and still somehow didn’t get voted into the all-star game.  In addition to being an animal on the boards, he’s a great passing big man, shoots 85% from the line, and can actually step back and hit the three on occasion (42% last year).

Don’t believe me about how boring his game is? Check out this so-called ‘highlight’ video from one of his best games last season:

10.          Zach Randolph

                 

               There are only two reasons why Zack Randolph is on this list over Love. First, his team had more than 16 wins and he was awesomely entertaining to watch in the post-season. Second, I am genuinely afraid he might find me and eat me if he found out he got left off a top10 list. Randolph was 2^nd in off rebounding (4.2), 3^rd in overall rebounding (12.2), and shot a very solid 76% from the FT line. Oh yeah, and he also averaged 20.4 pts a game while shooting over 50% from the field. For all the knocks of him being a selfish player, he averaged 2.2 APG (twice as many as Dwight Howard) and ‘only’ turned it over twice a game (roughly half as frequently as Howard). I’ve also never seen an NBA player be so effective without using his off-hand. I think he’s the only NBA player that could average 20 points a game if you chopped off his right arm. Check out this highlight where he scores 34 points while barely touching the ball with his right hand (Please forgive the Hubie Brown rambling). My favorite part has to be where he blatantly shoves Durant out-of-bounds to grab a board (2:18). 

9.            Chris Paul

                                              Image taken from chrispaulworkout.com

                 

              Despite my alleged point guard bias, CPIII is one of only two PGs to make this top 10 list.  Even though he has not been the same player since his knee issues (and playing on New Orleans certainly doesn’t help matters), he is one of the best pure PGs to ever play the game. While his APG and PPG were both down in 2010-2011 (9.9 APG versus 10.7 in 2009 and 16.3 PPG versus 18.7), he was still 4^th in the league in APG. Most importantly, he had the best assist-to-turnover ratio of the top 5 point guards (Rose, Rondo, Nash, Williams) averaging almost 4.5 assists for every turnover. He also led the league in steals/game, shot 87% from the FT line, and pretty much single-handedly got New Orleans into the playoffs. I can't wait to watch him throw ridiculous alley-oops to Blake all year.

8.            Amare Stoudemire

                                              Image taken from shortshortsweakprose.com

                Amare had a huge first half of 2010 and he was a lot of people’s early favorite for MVP. I think he had a great season and definitely proved he could succeed without Nash setting him up for dunk after dunk. He was tied for fifth in the league in scoring (25.3), shot over 50% from the field, and rejuvenated the Knicks franchise. That being said, stats can’t really capture how bad he is at defense or how many more points the Knicks because Amare is staring off into space instead of playing help-side D. I'll never forgive him for not playing any defense on those Suns teams. I’m not a huge fan of the +/- stat for basketball, but I think its telling that Amare couldn’t even crack the top 5 of the Knicks in terms of +/-

7.            Kobe Bryant

               

                                                        Image taken from wikepidea.org

               Kobe is obviously on the way down, but he still had a strong 2010-2011 campaign tying Amare for 5^th in the league in scoring (25.3).  While his points, rebounds and assists were all slightly down in 2010-2011, this seems to have been mostly a function of him playing 5 less minutes per game. He shot around the same FG% (45%) that he has his whole career and was still one of the most dangerous scorers in the game. Though I’ve never liked Kobe (mostly because people unfairly compare him to MJ and it’s not even close), he has 5 rings for a reason. Let's just hope he never gets that 6^th  ring or the Jordan comparisons will never end.

6.            Dwight Howard

                                                       Image taken from soletron.com

                This is probably lower than many people would rank Dwight and according to pretty much any player efficiency stat, he should be higher. ESPN ranks him 2^nd behind only LBJ and hoopstats.com ranks him 1^st in efficiency and for good reason. He averaged 14.2 RPG, 4.0 Off RPG, averaged 2.3 blocks per game, and shot almost 60% from the field. He did all that while averaging 22.9 PPG (good for 11^th in the league) and playing awesome help defense. He’s very likely the most dominant defensive force in NBA history. But I still can’t put a player in the top5 when they are a liability on the FT line (59.6%) and can’t really create their own shot. His first few years in the league I was concerned he'd break the backboard every time he took a shot. His offensive prowess did improve significantly last year though (added his best impersonation of Tim Duncan with the bank shot and something of a rolling across the lane hook shot) so he could still end up being a very good offensive player.

Stay tuned for the top 5, which I will hopefully be posting by X-mas! Let me know which players you agree/disagree with.

All stats taken from espn.com, hoopstats.com, and nba.com.  Videos uploaded from you-tube.

Putting Poker on Your Resume

There has always been a lot of debate within the poker community on whether or not a professional poker player should include this on his resume when he (or she) is trying to move on to something else.  This is especially relevant in the wake of Black Friday since many players are looking for alternative career paths.  Since I recently was offered and accepted a trading position (while including poker on my resume), I thought I would share my opinions on the issue.  Shockingly, I have seen a lot of people (often very smart and well-respected members of the poker community) advocating that you shouldn’t include poker on your resume.  Frankly, I think this is horrible advice (generally speaking) and a pretty irrational decision.

Before I make some fairly bold statements, let me qualify this argument by stating that my argument is intended for players who have actually been successful professional poker players. To me, that means you made $50k+ a year while playing poker as your primary source of income.  I think it goes without saying that you going to the casino twice a month and making a couple thousand dollars a year while living in your parents’ basement does not make you a professional poker player.  It might make you a relatively good recreational player, but it certainly doesn’t qualify you as a professional. And you probably shouldn’t highlight poker in the past employment portion of your resume.

First, I honestly think it is pretty irrational for professionals to not include poker on their resumes.  For many professionals, poker has been their primary, and in most cases only, source of income (and many have made a very good living playing) for multiple years. I know this was the case for me.  The decision I was faced with (and that most players are faced with) was not  “well, should I include my poker on my resume or do I include the cure for cancer that I single-handedly developed”. It was between poker and nothing. It was between including a game that I worked very hard to be successful at and in the process, demonstrated all sorts of very desirable qualities, or literally putting nothing at all meaningful on my resume.  This is the case for most of the professional players I know. How is that a debate? How can having a resume gap that often spans five or more years be better than including poker? 

                                         Image taken from :http://www.survivingtherecession.net

As poker players, we should know better than almost anyone that sometimes the best decision is the lesser of two evils. Sometimes the best decision is a play with an expected value of zero. While having poker as the only work experience on your resume is less than ideal, it is better than the alternative.  Obviously, I think playing poker professionally is a legitimate job and should be valued as work experience. The game requires an immense amount of skill and I think many of these skills are translatable to other career paths. Unfortunately, society as a whole disagrees. There is still a stigma associated with poker that it’s just luck and that the people who play it are degenerate gamblers recklessly risking their life savings. Sadly, it’s true that most of the closed-minded people that will be hiring for companies will see poker on a resume, laugh it off, and rip the resume up in about two minutes. They might even call someone in to the room to joke about it together.  

But what’s the alternative? Having a resume that fills up ½ a page and consists mainly of summer internships and high school jobs with multiple years since your last work experience? If you submit that resume, the HR person is just as likely to disregard your resume without giving it a second thought.  Maybe they won’t laugh or make jokes about it, but you will still have absolutely no chance of getting the job. At best, your resume will be viewed as mediocre and particularly in today’s job market, mediocrity doesn’t get you job interviews. For any kind of competitive position, there are going to be way stronger resumes than one with a big resume gap, and you’ll have no chance at securing an interview.  There will literally be a 0% chance of getting your foot in the door.

It’s certainly true that including poker on your resume will be very polarizing. The vast majority of the time, they will see poker and automatically eliminate you as a potential candidate.  However, if you write about your poker experience in an intelligent and professional way and highlight the skills that you made a successful poker player*, some of the more open-minded people will like your resume.  It may not happen frequently, but maybe 10% of the time the person reading your resume will love poker, or at least know enough about it to be open-minded, and consider interviewing you. It will separate you from the myriad of resumes the company is filtering out and give you a chance to get an interview.  At the very least it will be something unique and interesting that they might want to hear more about.  And to the right eyes, it may even be something really impressive.   

*I’ve included the poker section of my resume below as a general reference for players thinking of including poker on their resumes. Obviously, don’t copy mine word for word, but I thought it might give some ideas for other players.  There are obviously certain industries (most noticeably, trading) that are much more open to people with a poker background, but I definitely think people should be including it in pretty much any industry they are looking to get into. Obviously, you should tailor your resume to that particular industry. I think given the great variety of skills needed to be successful as an online poker player (especially in today’s environment), there are skills that are translatable to a wide variety of fields.

Besides the logical argument for including poker in your resume that I made above (which I think should be pretty persuasive), there is the simple fact that I take pride in having been a professional poker player. It was probably the most difficult thing I have ever accomplished and I have no desire to hide it when applying for jobs.  I think the goal should be to change other people’s perception of poker, not to cover it up like we did something wrong.  

Experience_______________________________________________________________________________

Professional Poker Player                                                                                               June 2009- Current

·        Profited over $X with rate of $Y/hr over two years of playing professionally utilizing logical deduction, game theory analysis, combinatorial mathematics, strategic decision making, and statistical analysis

·         Exercised discipline and excellent risk management by successfully navigating the volatility associated with mid and high stakes No Limit Holdem

·         Assessed complex situations objectively and made time-sensitive, high-pressure, strategic decisions while 12-15 tabling without allowing emotions to affect these decisions

·         Gathered and processed vast amounts of information, used this information to create a profitable strategy, and implemented this winning strategy over a 2.5 million hand sample

·         Identified betting patterns of specific opponents and used this information to exploit their tendencies and gain edges in expected value

·         Achieved Supernova Elite Status on Pokerstars in 2010 for frequent play, one of only 342 players in the world

Quick Update

Just as a quick update and clarification, I have donated $300 to the PPA, $269 for my winnings and $31 for the people who have liked this blog.  I am still donating $1/"Like" to the Poker Players Alliance. Though I will no longer be playing, I feel just as passionately that poker should be licensed and regulated here in the US.

Trading Job

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. While I’ve been in Toronto, I have been playing hundred hour weeks and so I haven’t had much time to update the blog. To be honest, when I’ve been back in Chicago, I have had plenty of time to write but I’ve just been pretty lazy and unmotivated.  I think this has been largely due to being in the middle of my longest and largest poker downswing. Since Black Friday, I have really been struggling at the tables, even moving down to $1/$2 at the end of my last trip. Over the few months I’ve been in Canada, I think I’m down something like $25k even after bonuses.  I did lose $50k at $25/$50 in 3000 hands and run $7k under expected value, but it’s been discouraging to say the least. That’s over about 700 hours of play and 650k hands. That’s certainly a longer downswing than I ever thought possible for a good winning player. I find it difficult to write as any kind of authority on poker when I have those kinds of results over that kind of sample. That being said, I know how well I understand the game and how good I can be when I’m playing my A game. It’s just a matter of playing that A game more consistently. 

Anyway, I do have some big news. While home in August I interviewed with a trading firm in Chicago and they extended an offer to me at the beginning of October. After a lot of contemplation, I ended up accepting the job and I start on Monday. For me, the decision to give up poker in favor of trading was not an easy one and definitely bittersweet. 

On the downside, I will be taking a pretty massive pay cut and will have to follow a way more rigid schedule. I am certainly not looking forward to waking up at 5:30 AM every day or going to bed at 10PM every night. I am by no means a morning person and I honestly can’t even remember the last time I went to bed before midnight. I also hate quitting poker when I feel like I still had a lot of potential to improve and when I was getting pretty close to getting Supernova Elite again. Not to mention ending (or at least suspending) my poker career on a large downswing isn’t exactly the ideal way to go out.

However, I am VERY excited to be living in Chicago again. I think Toronto is a pretty cool city, but I honestly think Chicago dominates it in every respect, and that’s without even considering that my girlfriend, most my friends, and family all live in Chicago. I’m also excited to learn a new industry and apply the skills I’ve learned through poker to trading. I’ve always been very interested in trading and based on everything I know and everyone I’ve talked to, it seems to be similar to poker in a lot of respects.  I was actually going to write a future post comparing poker and trading so now I will feel even more qualified to do that.

Before wrapping this post up, I’d just like to touch on downswings in poker (since I’m ending on a large one). I think a large portion of the general population think playing poker professionally is A. not a “real job” whatever that means or B. a pretty cushy job where we get paid lots of money for clicking buttons (which is at least partially true). However, I think that people severely underestimate the emotional toll playing poker professionally can take on you and how difficult it can be to run bad (“get unlucky”) for an extended period of time and still make the best objective decisions without allowing emotion to cloud your judgment. There aren’t a lot of people in the world that can work 40 hours in a week, lose $10k, and still show up Monday with a clear head and confidence in his/her own abilities. To be honest, I’m not always sure I’m one of them.

While I certain was running very bad during the time I spent in Toronto, I definitely don’t think that is the main explanation for my more than disappointing results. I think it really was a combination of a lot of factors. In retrospect, I don’t think playing 100 hrs/week was the best choice for my results. I wanted to make sure I achieved Supernova Elite and wanted to spend as little time as possible in Toronto to do so. I think in a way I lost sight of the trees for the forest. I had this overall big picture goal of getting SNE and instead of focusing on the minute details that make a great poker player successful, I was just worried about getting as many hands in as possible. Instead of thinking about how to play each hand in the most profitable way, I just auto-piloted and assumed my results at the table would take care of themselves. In a game where your success is based largely on your ability to pick up on the tiniest pieces of information and to identify the most subtle shifts in your opponent’s strategies, I don’t think anyone can really play 100 hrs/week on their A game.

  

Additionally, I think playing those kinds of hours makes you more emotionally fragile (at least for me). Usually, if I’m running bad I will take an hour off and watch a training video, or review some hands, or even just do a workout. I’ll do something to keep myself calm, confident in my decision-making and in emotional control. In Toronto, I felt so much pressure to just play as many hours as possible that I would just try to fight through the run bad without ever really taking a step back. I think that was my biggest mistake and the biggest factor in my poor results. I think spending that much time at the tables and living that unbalanced of a lifestyle is very suboptimal for a poker pro. It breeds bad habits, shatters self-confidence, and can lead to inconsistent logic. So I guess my point to professionals out there is that balance is extremely important to poker results, not only within the game, but also in your life outside of it.                 

Theoretical reasoning of poker as a game of skill

Poker is a game of skill. This is not an opinion or a questionable claim. It is a simple fact that can be demonstrated both theoretically and empirically (especially empirically). As any other pros reading this can attest, it is unbelievably frustrating to hear people repeatedly call poker a “game of chance”. Do people just think the 50,000+ pros that have been doing this for years are just the luckiest people on earth? So in this post, I will attempt to theoretically reason why, in the long run, poker is a game of skill. In a future post, I’ll tackle the empirical evidence that poker is a game of skill.
 
Before we begin, I will need to define a couple of terms to ensure we’re all on the same page:
 

•  Game of Skill- A game where the outcome is determined predominantly by mental and/or physical skill, rather than by pure chance

• Game of Chance- A game where the outcome is determined predominantly by randomness

In order to prove that poker qualifies as a game of skill, let’s take a look at a hypothetical poker cash game. In this hypothetical game, let’s assume the following:

1. There is no rake
2. The players play at the same stakes* the entire time
3. Each player gets dealt an infinite amount of hands
4. The decisions that a player makes in each hand materially affects that player’s monetary results.

The first three assumptions are just parameters for this hypothetical game. They serve to simplify the argument. The final assumption is the one that needs to be supported for the argument to hold.  It can easily be established that a player’s decisions affect his monetary results through a couple of examples.

Image taken from TournamentTerminator.com

 
Example 1: Player A decides to fold every single hand he is dealt. Let’s say Player A decides that he is going to fold every single hand he is dealt. Well, this decision has guaranteed Player A will lose money. Chance will play absolutely no role in his results. If there are 10 players at the table and the blinds are $5/$10, Player A has guaranteed he will lose exactly $15 every 10 hands. He will have to pay the small blind and the big blind each time the blinds come around (called an orbit).  Even though the average winnings of the players at the table will be $0 over these 10 hands (remember it’s a zero-sum game!), Player A will lose $15 during these same 10 hands. His decision to fold every hand has caused him to have below average results.
 
Example 2: Player A decides to call a river bet with 3 high. Let’s say Player A gets dealt two cards, a two and a three of spades (2s3s). The first 7 players fold, leaving the Player B, the small blind, and the big blind. Player B raises to 30 (blinds are $5 and $10). The small blind folds. Player A decides to call with his 2s3s preflop:


Full Tilt Poker $5/$10 No Limit Hold'em - 3 players


DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter


Player B (BTN): $1000.00


Seat 2 (SB): $1000.00


Hero (BB): $1000.00


Pre Flop: ($15.00) Player A is BB with 2 3


Player B raises to $30, 1 fold, Player A calls $20

Okay so now the flop (the first 3 community cards) gets dealt. Since Player A, who has 2s3s, is in the big blind (BB), he must act first after the flop. He decides to check, which is essentially the decision to do nothing until your opponent acts. The other options are to bet or to fold, but since Player B has not bet anything on the flop yet, it would make no sense to fold. Instead you can check and see what Player B does. If Player B bets, player A must make a decision to call, raise, or fold. If Player B checks, the turn gets dealt.


Player B decides to bet $30 and Player A calls with a flush draw and a gutshot.


Flop: ($65.00) 5 6 7 (2 players)


Player A checks, Player B bets $30, Player A calls $30


The Turn is another 5. Player B bets and Player A calls.


Turn: ($125.00) 5 (2 players)


Player A checks, Player B bets $60, Player A calls $60


The river gets dealt and a final betting round exists. The River is an 8 of diamonds (8d) so Player A plays the board. His hand is a pair of 5s with a 678 kicker. To make his best 5 card hand, he uses zero of the cards that were dealt face down to him (the 2s and 3s). He uses all 5 community cards. This is called playing the board


River: ($245.00) 8 (2 players)


Player A checks, Player B bets $100, Player A calls $100


Final Pot: $445.00


Hero shows 2 3


Player B wins $445.00

On the river, Player B bets $100 and player A decides to call. Now will his decision to call this river affect his monetary results? Of course.  Player B can absolutely never be losing to him. No matter what two cards player B holds he will always have something as good or better than Player A. If Player B has a 2 and a 3 as well, the two players will tie and split the pot. However, if Player B has any other two cards, his hand will be better than Player A's and he'll win the pot. By making this river call, player A has essentially thrown away $100. This clearly illustrates that a player’s decisions will impact his monetary results.


Making the decision to fold every single hand or to call the river with nothing will materially affect your results. This distinguishes poker from zero-sum games of chance alone. Take flipping a coin for example. If two people are flipping a coin and wagering $1 on the outcome every time (a zero-sum game), there is only one decision to be made. The player chooses “heads” or “tails” and in the long run, this decision will not affect the players’ results. Each player will win 50% and lose 50% and end up breaking even.
 
Poker is fundamentally different because in its essence, poker is a strategy-based game of decision-making. In the long run, the players that consistently make better decisions will win money and the players that consistently make worse decisions will lose money.
 
If each player in our hypothetical cash game is dealt an infinite number of hands, then each player will be placed in the same exact situations – each player will get outdrawn when they have the best hand the same number of times; each person will be dealt aces the same amount; each person will hit their flush draw on the river the same number of times, each person will lose kings to aces preflop the same number of times, etc.  The point being that if everyone plays an infinite number of hands, everyone will get into the same exact scenarios, and only what the players control -their own decision making- will impact their results. The short-run luck inherent in poker will even out, and 100% of the variability in players’ earnings will be explained by differences in ability rather than differences in luck.  If Player A makes 100k and Player B loses 100k over an infinite hand sample, this difference can be explained ONLY by Player A consistently making better decisions than Player B.
 
This demonstrates that poker is theoretically a game of skill in the very long run. Of course, this hypothetical game can never exist in reality. In reality, nobody gets dealt an infinite number of hands and thus chance does play some role in players’ results. The fewer hands a person plays, the higher proportion of the results will be explained by randomness rather than skill differences. In order to mimic this hypothetical infinite hand game, professional poker players generally try to play as many hands as possible. For example, I try to play 150,000 hands per month. By increasing my sample size, I effectively increase the impact my own decision-making has on my results and reduce the impact of luck on these results. Playing a large amount of hands reduces the volatility of my earnings and allows me to make a fairly predictable income stream.
 
A good analogy to drive home this concept is to look at how a casino makes money. Over a few spins of the roulette wheel, it is very possible the casino gets “unlucky” and loses money. They have an edge against the players (remember they make roughly 5 cents on every $1 bet), but in the short run randomness might prevail over this mathematical edge, and the casino will lose money. However, given enough spins of the wheel, the actual results will eventually converge to the expected results, and the casino will win. The concept is the same for poker players.  Over a few hands, the more skilled poker players, who have an edge just like the casino, may lose to the less skilled players.  However, as the number of hands increases, the players’ actual results eventually converge to their expected results (EVs), and the better players will win money from the worse players.
 
Though this post far from proves that poker is primarily a game of skill over a few hands or even a few hundred hands, it demonstrates that in the long run, poker is a game of skill. Over a long enough time horizon, the quality of the players’ decisions, not the quality of their cards, will be the main determinant of their results. 
 
In my next post, I’ll take a look at why it shouldn’t really matter that poker is subject to short-term randomness, and how many other industries are subject to similar short-term randomness. 





* Stakes refer to the size of the small blind and big blind in a given game. There is a wide variety of different stakes. Online these stakes range from 0.01/.02 (one cent, two cent) where you can play for a long time with a few dollars to $25/$50 (and even higher) where you need thousands of dollars to play. 

The reason I included this as an assumption is because in poker there are a few different ways that you can get "unlucky" or "lucky". One of these ways to get lucky is if you play a wide variety of stakes and only play a fairly small sample at certain stakes. Let's say you play a large sample of hands at $5/$10 and very small samples of hands at $1/$2 and $25/$50. During the large sample of hands at $5/$10, the results will be explained largely by your ability since over a large sample your expected results and actual results will converge. Luck will play very little role in these results. However at the smaller samples at $1/$2 and $25/$50, randomness will play a significant role in your results. If you run well (get lucky) at higher stakes and run poorly (get unlucky) at lower stakes, your overall results will be biased upwards towards your true expected value. The poor results from running bad at low stakes will matter very little compared to the good results from running well at high stakes.

How poker differs from casino games like roulette, craps, slots, and blackjack

Whenever people find out I play poker professionally, I get a wide range of reactions from “Wow that’s so cool” to “Man, that seems risky” to “Well you better save the money you have now because your good luck won’t continue forever. And then you’ll lose it all”. In this first topic, I’ll try to debunk some myths about what poker is and what differentiates it from games of chance.

First off, poker is often unfairly associated with casino games like slots, roulette, or craps. I can only assume this is because poker is often found and played in a casino next to these games of chance. However, it is fundamentally different.  Games of chance are played against a house and require no skill or strategy.  (Blackjack is the exception among casino games because it is a game that requires some skill but in the end, it is still a losing proposition against the house*). In these games, the house (i.e. the casino) ALWAYS has an edge. These edges are formed within the structure of the game because the payouts offered by the casino are worse than the odds of winning. This means that all the players have a negative expected value (-EV) on their bets.  Players may win at these games in the short run, but as the number of trials increases, the players’ actual results will eventually converge on their expected value, and they will end up losing. This is how the casino makes their money. They take these small edges over huge samples and that adds up to a ton of money.

For some quick and easy math to see why these games have negative expected value, let’s look at roulette:

There are 38 numbers (36 on the board and 2 greens). 

Let’s say you bet $1 on 23. Well your odds of winning are 1/38. Each individual spin of the wheel is independent of any other and each number will always have a 1/38 chance of hitting. If the number you bet on (23) hits, you will be paid 35:1 so you will keep your $1 and profit $35. If any number but 23 hits, you lose $1. The general formula for figuring out your expected value (EV) is:

EV = (Probability of Winning)* ($ Profit when you win)- (Probability of losing)*($ loss when you lose)

So if you bet a $1, your EV can be easily calculated:

EV =  (1/38 * 35)– (37/38 *1) = 35/38-37/38 = -$0.05263

This means that every time you place a $1 bet on an individual roulette number, you lose about 5 cents and the casino makes about 5 cents. Now different bets on the roulette table (and in other games like craps) have different pay outs, but they are all losing bets. They all have negative expected value (-EV) and this can be mathematically proven as evidenced by the example above. (If you want to see why other games of chance found in a casino are –EV, tell me which games in the comments below and I’d be happy to cover that in a later topic.)

Poker is fundamentally different from this in that the players do not play against the house.  Rather each player competes against the other players at the table. Poker is a zero-sum game (minus rake) with strategic depth requiring immense skill. This means that for every dollar lost at a poker table, someone else is winning a dollar. The casino makes their money by acting as a middleman and taking a small percentage up to a certain dollar threshold (known as the rake) out of pots.  In this respect, the structure of poker is identical to that of derivatives trading, where brokers take a % of each trade and essentially mimic the rake.

For many readers this post is probably pretty basic, but I think it is an extremely important distinction to make. In all of the casino games (craps, roulette, slots, etc) every single player has negative expected value. It is impossible for any players to have a positive expected value (without cheating or counting cards in blackjack). Poker is different. The structure of poker as a zero-sum game where you compete against other individual players (rather than the house) enables certain players (the more skilled ones!) to be +EV and others to be –EV, even though the average EV of all the players in the game will be 0 (assuming no rake).

* Blackjack is different from pure games of chance (like roulette or slots) because it does require some skill. Each hand, players are faced with a variety of decisions- hit, stand, double, split – that will impact their results. Like poker, players that make better decisions with have higher EV and players that make worse decisions will have lower EV.

However, unlike poker, blackjack is played against the house, and the house still has a built-in edge. In blackjack, the casino’s advantage comes from the dealer acting last. The other players must make their decisions first and if a player busts (goes over 21), he loses his bet, regardless of the dealer’s results. Even if the dealer subsequently busts on the same hand, the player who already busted loses his bet. For this reason, the dealer getting to act last has value. It creates an edge for the house and makes the most skilled blackjack players slightly –EV.  Most calculations are that a player making optimal blackjack decisions faces between a 0.1-1% disadvantage (they will lose a fraction of a cent on every dollar bet). Obviously, players that don’t make optimal decisions will be more –EV and lose more money. The main point being that in blackjack, the house has a built-in edge and even the most skilled players are –EV.  In poker, the relatively more skilled players will be +EV (more on this later).