[interroboink]

This is an important topic to me, and I'm glad to see one of the "winners" state plainly how much luck is involved in poker, and by analogy, many other areas of life.

I'd love to see articles like this written by someone who did not win, too. It's too bad that people pay less attention to those stories, as he mentioned in the article (c.f. clickbaity title). At least this is a winner admitting the importance of luck, rather than just saying "do what I did, and you can win too!" [1]

I'm surprised there was no mention of modern machine learning "solvers" for poker, which can get very close to perfect play. The game is not truly solved in the game-theoretic sense, but so close as to make very little difference, as I understand it. Some professional players do strange things like look at the second hand of their watch, as a source of randomness as input to their decision making, since ideal play requires some true randomness in your actions.[2]

So, in addition to the "results-based vs. process-based" angles presented in the article, I'd say there's also a "mathematics-based" consideration. At least for poker, where all the rules are perfectly clear. Harder to apply that to real-life poker-esque situations like founding startups, of course.

[1] As always, relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1827/

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/18/magazine/ai-technology-po... — NYT "How A.I. Conquered Poker" (alt link: https://archive.is/QbXXE)

[WalterBright]

> admitting the importance of luck

Poker is a mathematical game with mathematically fixed odds. Real life is different in that there is a considerable amount of room to tilt the odds in one's favor.

For an obvious way to tilt odds in your favor, stay in school and learn what you're being taught.

[interroboink]

> ... stay in school and learn what you're being taught.

Agreed with you there (:

And generally, doing what you (ethically) can to give yourself a leg up is great. But I find that approach/attitude can get dicey when it is then used to cast judgement on other people (I'm not saying you were, just going on a tangent here). Acknowledging the sometimes-overwhelming effects of luck on a person's life, despite their best efforts, has helped me be more empathetic, I think.

If someone is down-and-out, maybe they were lazy or wasted their opportunities, but maybe they didn't, and they just got waylaid by misfortune. Keeping that in mind helps me hold back from shouting at them to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps!" or such. That may be helpful in the former case, but can be hurtful in the latter.

[dambi0]

What courses / subjects would you recommend?