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Maryann Guberman has been a writer and editor with many gaming publications, including Sports Form, Card Player, Poker World, Player's Panorama and Systems and Methods. She also has written and edited numerous books on gambling.

Aug 07, 2004

Luck: It Can't Be Denied

A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them. -- P. J. O'Rourke

In this peopled universe numerous individuals dwell who insist there's no such thing as luck. They look with scorn on the word that defines anything which cannot be inserted into a mathematical model. They believe everything has to have a reason and if they can't reason it out, it just doesn't exist. It's likely these are the same people who will debate for hours with you as to whether or not a tree falling in the forest makes or doesn't make a sound if no one is there to hear it.

All I can say to these people is this: Get real. Luck exists. And the word we choose on occasions when we can't quite pin down the cause of an outcome is luck.

Luck exists, especially in poker. How else do you explain rank novices bobbing and weaving through a forest of professional players to surge ahead and win major championships? How then can you look at a hand that has a 86 percent chance of winning with two card to go and witness its annihilation when the remaining 14 percent rears up and chomps down on the pot?

I suppose you could just say "that's the way the cards fall," but if you say that, you have to ask what makes them fall the way they do? Why the case trey on the river when any one of 40-some cards could have flipped out of the dealer's hand? Why would someone play a totally trash hand only to have it turn into a big winner?

We certainly don't call this skill, do we?

Ralph Waldo Emerson is often quoted as having said, "Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect." As a high school student, I enjoyed reading Emerson but this particular belief of his sounds like an excuse rather than a principle. His explanation, was, I believe, biased by his religious beliefs.

Arguing hat luck doesn't exist is just a method of gaining attention albeit by employing faulty reasoning. Before this year's World Series of Poker championship kicked off , when it was common knowledge that the number of entrants would top 500, one noted, skilled, respected player was asked what he thought. "At this point it's a lottery," he was overheard saying.

In life many things cannot be explained -- not as cause and effect, not as preparation, not as reasonable, not as predictable. Perhaps if we select another non-four-letter word to describe luck the naysayers would not protest so much. Maybe we should choose something like fortuitousness, or chance or cheating or maybe even miracle? Nah, let's just stick with lottery. After all, everyone knows you can't go up against those (lottery) odds and win. And if you do, you were pretty darned lottery!

Get the point? In our everyday lives -- our jobs, our interpersonal relationships, our drive, our passion and our poker‹stuff happens that we don't have words to explain, stuff that defies logic. When we just have to shake our heads in awe and wonder, we can almost always be comforted by defining them as bad luck or good luck or dumb luck, or in an age of political poker correctness, bad lottery, good lottery or dumb lottery.