Sometimes, poker success can come from the most unlikliest of starting hands. When playing a game of Texas Hold em, we all hate to look down at a starting hand and see a 3-9 offsuit, but every so often it’s the hands like that that can win us a big pot. Of course, poker legend Doyle Brunson made the mediocre starting hand of 10-2 legendary, after it won him both final hands of his back to back World Series of Poker titles in the late 1970’s. In fact, the 10-2 is in fact called “the Doyle Brunson” showing haw much the man and the hands have become intertwined. But continuing to play bad hands, even if they have brought you unlikely luck in the past, is never a good proposition. Even Brunson himself has said that he became too infatuated with 10-2 as a starting hand throughout the years, believing he could never lose with it. He has said that he played the hand too many times in poker games when he shouldn’t have been playing it, and it ended up costing him many a pot.

So it goes to show you that while having a lucky hand is good for telling stories and for the overly superstitious, you can be a lot more effective when playing smart all the time and playing the right hands when they need to be played. That is the most effective way of creating luck.