Lucky Bastard.

We've all thought it, muttered it, shouted it, at a poker table. "Lucky Bastard" or much, much, much, worse. "You stupid called-away-2000-with-pocket-sixes-until-you-hit-the-set-on-the-river motherfucker" worse.

Much better and smarter players than me, such as CJ, Jordan, and Byron at Biggestron have weighed in on the subject of luck at the felt, and everyone makes really good points, but Byron really knocks it out of the park with this (read the whole thing):

Personally, I hate playing against bad players, unless I have a very, very good feel for their betting (or more often ‘calling’) patterns. When you can’t get them to fold, that 5-10% edge becomes apparent, and variance begins to make you sick with its roller coaster ways.

So what if you wait to have a tier one hand - when it gets cracked in a big pot, or only earns you a tiny pot to a bunch of folds, your time and money have been wasted. You *have* to get in there and gamble it up to make money at this game.

People think dominating hands (say the tier one AK vs the supposedly unplayable A7) are huge, but they are not that much of an edge. Winning with dominated hands is as common as rolling either a six or an eight with a pair of dice. Have you ever rolled a six or an eight?

Yeah, me too, plenty of times.

This the conundrum of serious low-limit players. Crap hands = craps.

The netdonkey will play anything, will bluff with anything, and will showdown anything. That is going to shave the advantage of skill down to nearly nothing in the short term.