“I’ve heard good players complain to me about how they get drawn out on all the time,“ Baldwin said after the 1981 tournament. But if they want to better their game and better their emotional state while playing, they should realize it’s a mirage. If you are an excellent player, People are going to draw out on you a lot more than you’re going to draw out on them because they’re simply going to have the worst hand against you a lot more times than you have the worst hand against them.
As Baldwin implies, expert players do not rely on luck. They are at war with luck. They use their skills to minimize luck as much as possible. They figure they’re getting the best of it, and they leave lucky draws to their weaker opponents. To the extent that they are getting the best of it, they will win more often than they lose.
Over the long run everybody gets the same proportion of good and bad cards, of winning and losing hands. Beginning poker players rely on big hands and lucky draws. Expert poker players use their skills to minimize their losses on their bad hands and maximize their profits on their big hands.