Luck V. Skill

Not talking about poker at large. It's, obviously, a skill game with results that are influenced, in the short-term, by luck (the only question being how short is short-term).

What I wonder is how much my results are influenced, from session to session, by how well I play. As opposed to being influenced by the aforementioned short-term luck. It's on my mind because I went on a mini-heater, my biggest in a while, yesterday. Then today was the opposite, a nose dive. This followed a week or so of mainly neutral results, so it was kind of odd to suddenly have two such extreme days.

Obviously these swings are a natural part of poker This is why I have strict bankroll rules, because I cannot predict/control when they hit one way or the other. But in the immediate wake of such an extreme couple days, I think it's worth considering how much better (if at all) I played Thursday than Friday.

And after sitting here, thinking on it for a bit, the only conclusion I can come to is I really have no idea.

Sometimes I'll be mass-tabling and I'll realize nobody's played back at me in at least 15 minutes (which might be like 400 hands). ie, every time I go after a pot, the other person backs off (or calls me down when I have it). Does that mean I'm tuned in, choosing the right spots to stay aggressive? Or is just a total fucking fluke? And on days when I get played back at constantly, nothing seems to work, am I forgetting to read board textures and failing to properly interpret my opponent's stats? Or are flops just hitting their lucky asses way more than they 'should'?

Again, I just don't know. You would have to think, over the long term, that I play better on days I have positive results than on days I don't. But at the same time, it's possible to have great results on one day and poor results the next day, and have played better the second day. In fact, play enough, and it's inevitable that will happen, and not all that rarely.

So I guess the question of how much swings are about luck and how much they are about differences in my level of play is unanswerable. Or at least not answerable without doing a lot of analyzing of a relatively huge sample. I still think it's worth thinking about a bit, because anything that makes me reflect on my play is probably good. Especially in this new era of multi-hour, mass-table sessions, where any predilection towards auto-pilot is very much heightened.

My gut feeling on it is that it's mainly luck, but definitely not all. That the days when I am particularly on or off my game will occasionally coincide with days when the deck is particularly kind or cruel, and extreme results will follow.

Most of the time, both factors will be somewhere in the average range, and I'll continue on my merry middling way.