Luck or Skill ??

Often it seems we attribute a 50ft putt to luck, or more often it seems a nice 100-200 ft shot to luck. and of course those Ace;s all of you seem to be getting..to luck.
But I always seem to think ..well, if you threw in the general direction of the basket and maybe closed your eyes it might be luck, but otherwise if you were aiming for the basket and it goes in in any situation ( ok..maybe unless it skips in or bounces off a tree..) then it was skill!! right?

Ok. so then what about all those missed shots? do we suck that bad? or is it not as easy as some make it look? haha..ok, maybe its just me!

Do you contribute a nice long shot or putt to skill or luck? I say skill.

[Jamie]

Luck is when preperation meets opportunity. I use to sell the crude out of cars. I would hear the other guys saying how lucky I was. I guess I was creating my own luck through skill. I will take luck over skill any day any way.

[Scoot_er]

So shanking a shot off toward the woods that kicks back into the fairway isn't luck?

For the most part the better you are the Luckier you are or you can be Like Feldberg and be a greaseball.

[Kliff]

Making a shot you aimed for is Skill.
Ricochet off a tree in heavy scrub and landing in the middle of the fairway is Luck.
Sometimes you have it, sometimes you don't.

[Jake Lowery]

On tiger woods '08 it's called "Luck skill" go figure.

[Bruce Brakel]

There's no such thing as luck. It has been proven over and over by grad students under controlled conditions. There are consequences that are beyond your skill level to repeat, like an ace off a tree. But luck, per se, definately does not exist.

[mark ellis]

Yo Bruce,

What do you mean by "luck, per se"?

We know luck exists. Consider the bugs on my windsheild. Each of the splats represents an insect who encountered bad luck.

[eric beich]

or was the bug not skilled in avoiding cars ? haha!

[Bruce Brakel]

Many reasonably intelligent people believe there is something called "luck" that comes in two flavors, good and bad. It comes in streaks and can be attracted or repelled variously by not breaking mirrors, throwing salt over your shoulder, not talking while the disc is in the air, and carrying various talismans. John McCain has lucky coins. You might have a lucky mini. I'm playing the best disc golf of my life and I don't have a lucky anything right now.

If you recruit 100 players and give them each one hundred dimes to gamble one by one on the outcome of a fair coin toss, and you encourage 50 of them to bring all their lucky gambling talismans and do all their lucky rituals, and forbid the other 50 from bringing or doing anything to influence their luck, their outcome will be roughly the same. If you repeat the experiment the luck enhancing group will win at the game as often as the luck deprived group. Graduate students have written papers on this for courses on psychology, statistics and paranormal studies.

So there is no such thing as luck. There are outcomes beyond our ability to control that sometimes go our way and sometimes go against us.

I threw a 1028 rated round today. I had one lucky drive and two lucky putts, not because I had a surplus of a thing that exists called "good luck" but because I had a favorable outcome on three low probability shots. I threw it in the general direction of the basket, twice, and it went in. The other shot missed more trees than I could miss intentionally. I fully intended to miss the first twelve trees. Missing the 58 following trees was beyond my skill set. My opponents, I'm sure, were all carrying luck enhancing devices. All I had going for me was weight loss, putting practice and better balance.

The bug had an unfavorable outcome on what truly is an unlikely occurrence. Far more bugs are eaten by bats than are squashed on windshields. But its not like he left the swamp without his lucky flea foot on his key chain.

[Gary Burdick]

Hey Bruce, Please explain how you can rate your round. Does it have to do anything with the footage? Par 54 ? Explain your math to me or the others that might want to know how one rates their play. Thanks, GB #554

[Bruce Brakel]

For tournaments I check on PDGA.com. My 1028 yesterday was at the Austin Collision Challenge. Mark Stephens did an excellent job of getting scores and ratings up the same day of the tournament.

For non-tournaments I just check to see how the course rated the last few times it was played for a tournament.

[mark ellis]

Bruce opined, "So there is no such thing as luck. There are outcomes beyond our ability to control that sometimes go our way and sometimes go against us."

When those outcomes beyond our control turn out good that is "good luck". The fact that we cannot control luck by some gimmick doesn't mean there is no luck.

We had no control over the time or place of our birth. But we were darn lucky to be born when and where we were.

Bruce's 1028 round (nice job, btw) shows that good luck exists. His skill put him in a position where some good luck smiled upon him to the extent of 1028. If Climo (or an great player) had an exceptionally lucky day he would find himself in the 1100 range.

Does anything appear to control luck? Maybe not control but my experience seems to suggest that some things do influence it. At least on a golf course, the more confident you are the luckier you will get. The more pissed off you get the more unlucky you will be.

[Disc Player Sports]

Believe in probability. Give anything the proper chance and it is probable.
Put a tree near a basket and it will probably get hit.
Put a basket near a tree, probability says it will not only get hit, but hit off that tree too!
Luck is the term of the unexpected.... but it is all probable.

Flip a coin 100 times. It will always come up 50% heads & 50% tails.
This is based on the law of probability.