The Inevitability of Streaks in Poker and Life
On March 24, 1991, 16,158 people gathered at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, millions of fans were glued to
The Inevitability of Streaks in Poker and Sports
On March 24, 1991, 16,158 people gathered at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, millions of fans were glued to their TV sets at home watching the Pay Per View broadcast and at least one Irish nine year old was given permission to stay up late to watch WrestleMania VII. It was only weeks after Operation Desert Storm, so, naturally enough, this politically engaged pre-pubescent was focused on the Main Event, which pitted All-American icon Hulk Hogan against supposed Iraqi sympathizer Sergeant Slaughter for the WWF Championship belt.
Way down the undercard, a newcomer going by the name ‘The Undertaker’ celebrated his WrestleMania debut with a surprise victory over veteran Jimmy ‘Superfly’ Snuka. The 4 minute and 20 second bout was not a particularly memorable one but it would grow in significance over the years.
Crash cut to April 6th 2014 and wrestling enthusiasts were descending on the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans for WrestleMania XXX. The Undertaker, now one of the most bankable stars in the franchise’s history, was taking on the former UFC champion Brock Lesnar at the top of the bill. On paper, it looked like a fair fight, but the bookmakers didn’t think so. They priced The Undertaker as a 1/66 favorite, pretty close to a sure thing, as he looked to extend his unbeaten record at WrestleMania, a series of 21 consecutive victories known as ‘The Streak’.
In April 2014, I was on a hot streak of my own, having booked 17 consecutive winning sessions in a row at the live cash game tables. Six of those sessions were played at the old Fitzwilliam Card Club in Dublin during the month of March, while the other eleven were played in Citywest during the Norwegian Poker Masters in April. Admittedly, some of the sessions in Citywest were short, but they were all separate sessions, usually punctuated by miserable failures in the tournaments that were also taking place.
When I bragged about my run-good on the cash tables to my good friend and cash game veteran Daragh Davey, he was quick to point out to me that his entire career had been one very long cash game session, adding that having that perspective is vital to long-term optimal decision-making. Just because the spoilsport was absolutely right didn’t stop me from firing back:
“Yeah, that sounds like what somebody who’s not on a streak would say.”
Sporty Streak
Apart from The Undertaker at WrestleMania, one of the most famous successful streaks in sports was that of legendary baseball player Joe DiMaggio, who, in 1941, held the record with a 56-game hitting sequence. Another was that of renowned boxer Rocky Marciano who was the World Heavyweight Champion between 1952 and 1956, never once losing a fight, defeating all 49 of his opponents, 44 by knock-out. Then there is ‘The King Of Clay’ Rafael Nadal who went on a remarkable 81-match unbeaten run on the surface between 2005 and 2007, shattering Guillermo Vilas’ previous record of 53.
In terms of team sport, the Boston Celtics’ streak of eight consecutive NBA championships in the so-called ‘Bill Russell Era’ from 1959 until 1966 was an extraordinary feat. Perhaps the most incredible streak, however, was that of Dutch wheelchair tennis sensation Esther Vergeer who retired in February 2013 riding a ten year, 470 consecutive match winning streak, during which she conceded only 18 sets.
Not all streaks are winning ones. From 1963 to 1991, NASCAR journeyman JD McDuffie ran 653 NASCAR races, made the top ten 106 times, but never made it to the top of the podium. In 1990, retired NBA center Chris Dudley missed 17 of 18 free throws in a single game, 13 straight at one point. Over 263 events from 2002 to the present, Charlie Wi has made over $10 million on the PGA Tour, but he is still without a single victory. Professional wrestler Curt Hawkins was the ultimate jobber, posting 269 straight Ls between 2016 and 2019.
There have been plenty of woeful runs in team sports, too. In 1889, the Louisville Colonels lost 26 straight games in Major League Baseball. During the 2002/2003 Premier League Season, Sunderland lost 15 straight games. The 2003–04 Pittsburgh Penguins and 2020–21 Buffalo Sabres are tied for the record for the longest losing streak in National Hockey League history at 18 games. In 2015, the Philadelphia 76ers lost 28 National Basketball Association games in a row.
Poker Streak
The poker world has also had its fair share of streaks. Doyle Brunson and Stu Ungar both won consecutive WSOP Main Events, but they did so in double-digit fields. Johnny Chan, on the other hand, outlasted 151 players in 1987, 166 in 1988, and then, in 1989, he got past 176 players, eventually succumbing to Phil Hellmuth heads-up when tantalisingly short of an epic hat-trick.
Brunson also won bracelets at four consecutive WSOPs between 1976 and 1979, but Loren Klein repeating that feat between 2016 and 2019 is more remarkable, again given field sizes. Adam Friedman achieved the same distinction between 2018 and 2022 and, even more impressively, he managed back-to-back-to-back victories in the WSOP $10k Dealers Choice Event as part of that sequence.
In 2003, the 1995 WSOP champion Dan Harrington made the Main Event final table for the third time, finishing in third out of 839 entrants, behind Chris Moneymaker. The very next year, he came fourth out of 2576 players for an extraordinary final table double. In fact, the vast majority of poker outliers have been doubles of some description. In 2012, Greg Merson won the WSOP $10k 6-Max Championship for $1.1 million and then hopped straight into the Main Event to take that down for $8.5 million.
In both 2013 and 2014, Mark Newhouse somehow came 9th in the WSOP Main Event. Daniel ‘Jungleman’ Cates won the Poker Player’s Championship in 2021 and 2022. Chris Moorman came 4th in the WPT World Championship in 2023 and 2024. In 2023, Shiina Okamoto took silver in the WSOP Ladies Event and managed to go one better in 2024, defeating Jamie Kerstetter heads-up.
Negreanu Streak
There must be some truly epic cashless streaks in tournament poker, but the game doesn’t have a way to record those. One crazy streak, however, belongs to Daniel Negreanu, who was unable to close in the period from 2013 to 2021. Fortunately for him, he has been back to winning ways in recent years, but his record of heads-up defeats is certainly one of the biggest outliers in poker.
In June 2014, Negreanu lost heads-up to Paul Volpe in the WSOP 2-7 Lowball Event. That same month, he got silver to Dan Colman in the WSOP Big One For One Drop. A few years later, in April 2017, on back-to-back days, he lost heads-up in Bellagio Mixed Highroller events to Ben Lamb and Daniel Alaei. Then, in June 2017, he was defeated by Abe Mosseri for the WSOP Omaha Hi Lo bracelet. Two more second-place finishes came in December 2017 when he lost to Dan Smith in a WPT Super Highroller and then to his nemesis Phil Hellmuth on an episode of Poker After Dark.
2018 would provide no reprieve for ‘The Kid Poker’ as, in May, he lost heads-up to Justin Bonomo in the Super Highroller Bowl. “When will it end?” he asked his vlog-watchers. Not in 2019 either, as John Hennigan beat him for the WSOP 7-card Stud title and Keith Tilston bested him for the WSOP Highroller title. The ignominy continued over the winter of 2020/2021 when he accepted a challenge from heads-up specialist Doug Polk. 36 sessions and 25,000 hands of $200/$400 ended costing him $1,201,807 and a pile of side bets.
While Negreanu was comprehensively beaten by Polk, it was noticeable how much his heads-up game had improved throughout that challenge. A few months later, he took those sharpened 1v1 skills back to the live felt, challenging Highstakes Dual champion Phil Hellmuth to three matches. Negreanu lost all three to push his losing streak out to 14 in a row. To add to that statistical aberrance, in that same period, Negreanu also had ten 3rd place finishes on his resume.
Random Streaks
Streaks will always be one of the most talked-about things in sport. Winning streaks, unbeaten streaks, losing streaks, hitting streaks and even participation streaks are all part of sporting and gambling folklore. The thing about streaks, however, is that they are statistically more common than most people think. For example, if you flip a coin 109 times, there is a 19.5% chance of a sequence of 10 heads or tails in a row. Many bankrolls have been Martingaled away on the false assumption that a streak would not continue.
The sheer volume of poker hands and poker tournaments I have played over my own 19-year career has created what seemed at first to be some outlier peculiarities, but actually, on closer inspection, are not statistical anomalies. For example, take my first 50,000 online tournaments/SNGs, played in the period September 2006 to March 2012, during which I played just over 8 million hands, paid $2,646,252 in buy-ins across 1942 days of play, had 942 winning days, 994 losing days and 6 break-even days. During that time, the following streaks occurred:
- I once cashed in 12 consecutive 6-max SNGs. (roughly 11,000-1)
- I once had 9 winning days in a row. (roughly 700-1)
- I once failed to cash in 56 consecutive tournaments. (roughly 4500-1)
- I was once dealt Aces on the same table 3 times in a row. (roughly 5 million-1)
- I once lost 11 times in a row with pocket Kings. (I was too upset to work out the odds of this!)
As you can see, despite how unusual all of those statistics are, given the sample size, each outcome was actually a favorite to occur at some point. Also, when you burrow down into the data, a tournament player needs streaks to occur. For obvious reasons, it is much better for them to win ten flips in a row and then lose ten in a row than win every second one.
Calculating the Odds
So, what were my chances of having a 17-game session winning streak? There are a multitude of factors, so it will require a lot of guesswork, but I’ll do my best gorilla math.
A player’s superior skill level means that they are better than a coin flip in a heads-up encounter. For example, Rafael Nadal’s 81 consecutive victories on clay imply that he was massively odds-on to win each match. But what was my edge as an above-average player in mostly 80-200 hand sessions of live cash-game poker versus between 4 and 8 opponents?
In the majority of the cash games that I played, I’d say I was the second or third-best player. Small hand samples increase the variance, but my default game back then was small-ball, which was not the most profitable way to play those games, but certainly the lowest variance approach. I also had control over when I terminated about three-quarters of the sessions. (I couldn’t be leaving buried, ye know!)
Based on the stats of far more experienced live cash pros and the standard deviation of an average session lasting 120 hands, I would estimate that I was roughly a 65-35 favorite to win each session. Therefore, my odds of winning 17 of those in a row were approximately 1500-1. That is obviously a tasty enough long-shot, especially for a tourney donk.
End of the Streak
Esther Vergeer famously said that a streak-ending defeat would actually be a relief. However, that defeat never came. On July 17, 1941, DiMaggio failed to get a hit versus the Cleveland Indians. In July 2021, Negreanu won the $50,000 PokerGo Cup event. Since then, he has booked nine more PokerGo tournament wins, two Heads-Up Dual victories, and last year he took down the prestigious WSOP Poker Player’s Championship.
Much to the surprise of wrestling fans in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome and all over the world, The Undertaker lost to Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania XXX. For one particular fan, however, it was more than a surprise. Undeterred by the 1/66 price, one British punter lumped a bet of £35,000 on ‘The Streak’ continuing. I guess, even in predetermined sports, there’s no such thing as a foregone conclusion.
In the early hours of April 20th, 2014, my streak also ended. Sitting in a great game at the Irish Open, a spot for a semi-bluff presented itself, was taken, and was ultimately cry-called after my opponent clocked himself. I missed my draw, he scooped a big pot, and it was 6 am, so I called it a night.
When DiMaggio failed to get a hit in his 57th consecutive game in 1941, he lost out on a $10,000 sponsorship promised to him by Heinz Ketchup if he matched the number ’57’ featured on their labels. I only lost out on a bottle of 18-Year-Old Limited Reserve Jameson whiskey that had been promised to me if I had extended my winning streak to eighteen.
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