Poker Pro Says He Is A Proven Winner Over A Large Enough Sample, Just Not This One
Lyle Pardoe has been running below expectation since 2020. He would like his sister to know that this is not the same as losing.
Lyle Pardoe plays no-limit hold’em five nights a week at the Juniper Card Room in Reno, and he would like it understood from the start that he is a winning player. He has a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet has been losing since 2020, but Pardoe regards that as a separate matter.
The long run
“Poker is a game of skill over the long run,” he says, drawing a line on a napkin that goes steadily down and then, at the very edge of the napkin, sharply up. He taps the middle. “We’re here. The up part is a mathematical certainty. It just hasn’t been scheduled.”
Asked how long the long run is, Pardoe said it was long enough to prove he is good but not so long that it includes the last six years, which he treats as an outlier.
I’m running forty big blinds per hundred hands below expectation. Nobody is that unlucky by accident. It means a huge amount of luck is coming, and I intend to be sitting down when it arrives.
Things Pardoe has classified as variance
- Every session since March 2020
- Calling an all-in with seven-four offsuit “to see where I was”
- The dealer on table nine, specifically
- Twelve straight months of what he calls “playing well and getting nothing”
His bankroll is now held by his sister, Denise, who releases it in weekly instalments and has asked him to stop sending her charts. He calls it a staking arrangement. She calls it his allowance.
We asked whether he had considered that he might simply not be very good. Pardoe said it was a fair question, that he had run the numbers on it, and that the numbers were also on a downswing.
