In Mike Caro’s previous blog posting he shared a list of truths about poker. This blog covers some poker fiction (ie false statements).  It’s not a quiz, because you don’t get to answer the questions. He does.

THE FALSE GROUP. Everything on this list is false.

After about 1,000 hours of play, everyone’s luck at poker is about equal, and skill alone determines who does better. (Don’t expect your luck to even out in 1,000 hours. It may not even out for your lifetime. Even if you did get precisely your fair share of flushes and full houses, you might not win your fair share of them. Additionally, there are all sorts of luck factors that influence your success, not the least of which is whether you happen to be available to play when that out-of-towner decides to unload $1 million. Your job is to do the best you can with the cards you’re dealt. A break-even player with $50,000 worth of overall bad luck for the year will lose $50,000. But if you learn skills that make you $120,000 better than break-even and you suffer $50,000 worth of misfortune, you’ll still win $70,000. That’s the secret. Your job isn’t making sure the cards are distributed fairly. Somebody else already has that job. Your job is to look at the cards you’re dealt and to make the most profitable decisions about them.)

On average, the top female poker players earn more money than the top male poker players. (Why is that false? What about question #1 in the True Group? Not a conflict. It’s the difference between what most intelligent women are capable of winning and what they actually are winning right now.)

There is more skill involved in limit hold ’em than in no-limit hold ’em. (You’re right, how could that possibly be true, although we hear the claim made quite often. In no limit, you need to make the same decisions about whether to bet or raise, but you also have to make decisions about how much to bet or raise. The only strong argument to the contrary is that in no-limit games, the all-in factor comes into play often. After someone is all-in, there are no subsequent decisions and the cards are simply dealt out with no further skill involved. This argument isn’t strong enough, however.)

On average, top professional blackjack players earn more than top professional poker players. (Not even close. Top poker pros earn a lot more.)

You can win a lot of extra profit by aggravating opponents and putting them emotionally on tilt. (Opponents may get aggravated, but they’ll usually decide that you’re just no fun to lose to. And when they decide that, they play better against you.)

Mike Caro is the greatest poker player alive, but nobody knows it. (Somebody knows it. See, it was a trick question. Speaking as a friend of Mike’s, I know he gets tired of hearing, “Those who can, do; those who can’t teach.” Whenever he hears people say that, he wants to slap their clubby little faces, because he personally was doing long before he was teaching. And he’s still doing; and if they don’t shut up, and if they have any money, he might have to do it to them, too. Got it?)

Any world-class player has an advantage against a well-programmed computer poker opponent, because the computer cannot use psychology. (Maybe the computer can’t use psychology or maybe it can. But in any case, the human can’t use psychology, so – at worst – this is a push from the computer’s point of view. If both opponents are forced to ignore psychology, the battle will be resolved on a purely computational basis. If the computer is properly programmed, it won’t lose, no matter how much psychology its opponent understands.)

A predetermined stop-loss specifying the maximum amount you should lose in a game will save you money. (This is not true in any honest game where you are not incapacitated, you feel like playing, and the opponents are beatable. The more hours you play under favorable conditions, the more you’ll win. You earn an average amount per hour. Consider that your wage. More hours, more money – just like most other jobs).

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