The Art Of Being Lucky

By Dennis Oehring

I REALLY LOVED THE MOVIE THE COOLER, starring Alec Baldwin and William H. Macy. For those of you who haven’t seen it, Baldwin manages an old school Las Vegas casino, and Macy plays a hapless loser whose luck is so bad, it rubs off on anyone he is around. Baldwin employs Macy as a “cooler” to hang around people in the casino who are on winning streaks, knowing their good luck will immediately change when Macy’s bad luck rubs off on them. The movie got me to thinking about luck, and how much of a factor it plays in our game.

I think we all know people whom we consider to be lucky or unlucky. Are some people really luckier than others? Are some people born with inherent good luck, while others have inherent bad luck? Could genetics somehow play a factor? I really don’t know the answers to these questions, but I believe there are definitely things that we can do that will increase the amount of good luck that we experience. This column will try to analyze some of them, especially as they relate to tournament play, whether online or in brick-and-mortar casinos.

There are dozens of books and CDs out on how to play poker, most written by professional players with documented track records of success in the game. These books all seem to focus on improving our skill level, whether in tournaments, satellites, or middle- or low-limit games. The luck factor is mentioned very little.

To me, luck plays a much greater role in tournament play than in live games. Considering the number of players one has to weed through to get to the final table at the WSOP these days, it just can’t happen without getting lucky many times over—which makes Dan Harrington’s feat of getting there two years in a row that much more amazing.

There are many professionals who have referred to luck and its importance. Tom McEvoy says that a key to winning tournaments is to survive long enough to put yourself in the position to get lucky. Chris Ferguson estimates that winning a tournament is probably 75 percent luck and 25 percent skill. And Mike Caro has claimed that if you are three times as good as other opponents, in other words that much more skillful, you might expect to win one tournament out of 100.

So if luck plays such a big role, then why go to all the effort to improve our skill? Why not be content with simply understanding the rules of the game that we’re playing, knowing that a flush beats a straight and so on, and let it go at that? Well, I go back to what McEvoy says. The level of skill we develop will determine how long we stick around, which in turn gives us the opportunity to get lucky. In tournament play, skill buys time, and the longer we can hang around in a tournament, the greater will be our chance of getting into the money.

As an example, I was playing in a tournament recently at my local casino. It was a no-limit, $35 dollar buy-in with a maximum of three rebuys and one add-on at the break. The player seated to my right was younger than me, and I had not seen him before. He entered almost every pot, called almost every raise pre-flop regardless of the amount and the cards he was holding, had to exhaust his rebuys early, and, consequently, was the first player from our table to bust out. He won a pot or two, but I felt the choices he made as to which pots he entered definitely showed his lack of skill and experience. He simply didn’t give himself a chance to stick around.

So, with all of these books written about improving our skills, why isn’t more written about luck? Probably because we can’t measure it. It isn’t tangible. It’s not available at Home Depot or Wal-Mart, we can’t take pills that will boost its level in our systems. For most of us, some days we have good luck, while other days we don’t. The problem is, we never know when we will have it and when we won’t. We can sit in a ring game for hours and rarely enter a pot, then be dealt several unbeatable hands in a row, and then never see a winning hand again for the rest of the session. Personally, I once won five sit-and-gos in a row online, and then didn’t win another one for close to a week.

I worked in sales for many years, and competition between salespeople is similar to competition between poker players. In sales, they say that 80 percent of the money is made by 20 percent of the salespeople. I’ve read where only 10 percent of cash players actually make money playing poker, so that leaves a whopping 90 percent of us who are consistently losing. But when I look at the winners in my local casino, I see people who have made every effort to be on top of their game. They are not above reading the latest articles in poker publications on improving their skills, despite having years of play under their belts. They work at their game constantly.

In sales, I was once told that luck occurs when preparation meets opportunity. In poker, the opportunity exists at our home game, our local casino, our Las Vegas vacation, or on our favorite Internet site. The amount of preparation we put into becoming better players will determine whether the overall luck that occurs for us will be good luck or bad luck. Sure, experience counts for something, but being experienced often means that we will continue to make the same mistakes over and over because that’s the way we’ve always played. We have to be open-minded enough to be able to look at our game objectively and see where we can improve. Some players will take the time to do this, but I sense the overwhelming majority of players consider that to be too much work. As a result, they are the ones who are destined to stay in the 90 percent bracket.

Another important factor is attitude. Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, is credited with saying, “If you think you can, you can, and if you think you can’t, you’re right.” If you don’t believe you’re good enough to win a tournament, it’s doubtful you ever will. If you believe you will be successful and experience good luck at the tables, you will attract far more good luck while competing than by believing otherwise. Caro is a proponent of this philosophy.

I hear all the time at my local casino references by many players as to how lucky one particular player is. There’s that guy who always cashes out several racks in live games and is a fine tournament player. I love what Ferguson has said about guys like this: “Show me the guy who everyone thinks is the luckiest person in poker, and I will show you the best poker player.” Is this person inherently luckier than others? That seems unlikely. My guess is that he has done everything he can do to prepare himself, including having a positive attitude and strong belief in his abilities, and luck just seems to come to him naturally and consistently as a result.

How many times have we heard the term “river rat,” referring to the player who pulls out the best hand on Fifth Street? And how often have we heard the winner, while stacking his chips, say with a smile, “I’d rather be lucky than good any day?” Well, personally, I’d rather be both. Wouldn’t you?

Dennis Oehring is a freelance writer based in Las Vegas.