Poker is Skill vs. Luck

[Martini]

You know, a year and a half later, I now realize the analogy I should have used with this thread.

If the game was played where everyone's cards were always face up, and everyone played optimally according to what they knew, then luck IS the deciding factor.

There.

Snappy comeback, sir! 

[luckystraights]

You know, a year and a half later, I now realize the analogy I should have used with this thread.

If the game was played where everyone's cards were always face up, and everyone played optimally according to what they knew, then luck IS the deciding factor.

There.

Snappy comeback, sir! 

your either making a mistake in your argument, or still don't understand this topic at all.

If people are playing "differn't levels of optimal" by definition if there where to be one, there are differen't llevels of skill at play, and that will always be the deciding factor as, as always luck will even out in the end.

Ofcouse reading players hands, is a part of the skill of the game.

oh and w/e

[gweeb]

I pray to the poker Gods........

[stooks99]

You know, a year and a half later, I now realize the analogy I should have used with this thread.

If the game was played where everyone's cards were always face up, and everyone played optimally according to what they knew, then luck IS the deciding factor.

There.

Snappy comeback, sir! 

your either making a mistake in your argument, or still don't understand this topic at all.

If people are playing "differn't levels of optimal" by definition if there where to be one, there are differen't llevels of skill at play, and that will always be the deciding factor as, as always luck will even out in the end.

Ofcouse reading players hands, is a part of the skill of the game.

oh and w/e

I made no mistake with this argument, and I do understand this topic...it's my topic. 

I'm sorry I brought it up...again.

[Martini]

@stooks99
I don't mind it being brought up again. It serves as a good primer to less experienced players or the disillusioned. I'm not quite sold on your latest statement though because if the game were played face up, a skilled player could still exploit another player's tendency to chase. But that is based on my interpretation of your statement. the "according to what they know" could either mean "the cards that they see" or "their knowledge of poker". I think the statement could be could be changed to "If the game were played face up and everyone played perfect poker then it would come down to luck."

[stooks99]

Let me be more specific.  If you take a game like limit hold 'em where a perfect strategy could EASILY be devised based on seeing all cards.  So, over 1000 hands of LHE, if everyone sees everyones cards an plays them optimally, then the deciding factor is luck.

I'm not trying to suggest to the potential-pro that I think his or her skill isn't relevant.  It is.  I've posted many times about how much skill is involved with poker.  But, if we let our egos get in the way or reality, I think it really takes us away from the full potential of this, or any, game.

[Martini]

Let me be more specific.  If you take a game like limit hold 'em where a perfect strategy could EASILY be devised based on seeing all cards.  So, over 1000 hands of LHE, if everyone sees everyones cards an plays them optimally, then the deciding factor is luck.

I'm not trying to suggest to the potential-pro that I think his or her skill isn't relevant.  It is.  I've posted many times about how much skill is involved with poker.  But, if we let our egos get in the way or reality, I think it really takes us away from the full potential of this, or any, game.

For sure. In that scenario whoever gets the best hole cards will determine the winner.

[gweeb]

Is it skill when you call and you know your beat ........when that one card will get you all his chips......or luck

[holdemholmes]

Is it skill when you call and you know your beat ........when that one card will get you all his chips......or luck

Heh....it's lack of skill when you call and know you're beat. When you hit that one card, it's luck.

[stooks99]

Is it skill when you call and you know your beat ........when that one card will get you all his chips......or luck

Heh....it's lack of skill when you call and know you're beat. When you hit that one card, it's luck.

Interesting point that Gweeb brings up.  Obviously, if we are playing with our hands face up, the times we see Aces or other monsters, we are going to fold.  However, I suppose something can be said toward "optimal strategy" involving implied or pot odds.

[luckystraights]

I tried to be philisophical in this post, but it didn't sound right.

so w/e, there is no luck, luck is a fiction to make people feel better about short term results, its merley fluctuations in longterm deviation, nothing more nothing less, in a perfect game where everyone playes perfect, no one cheats, everyone is a clone so there is no differences at all between anyone and anything, its easy for you to say hahah its obvious luck is the only difference, but lol that difference is just a shot term flucation, which will constantly change and evolve until an equilbrium is found, from then or.... or perhaps around that time there will be no change, no one will win, no one will loose, everything will remain stationary. Luck is just statistical deviation it doesn't facour your other anyone or anything else, it just is, your basis your argument upon an equation that isn't finished.

and unless these players are robots, there is an imesne amount of skill from all of them in making sure they are constantly playing perfect, any slip will be taken advtage of, even if these are all bots programmed by the same guy in a test scenario, he his utilizing his skill to ensure an even test, there is always skill and in most things it is significan't and will be a deciding factor in an outcome however long that takes wether it be seconds or decades, luck however although showing impressive fluctuations over time, will never be the deciding factor in the long term because as with water, it always settles and evens out.

You can correctly argue, that the longterm in realistic terms never exists, because it may take a thousand years, but stating that luck is at least as significant as skill without a  time constraing generally is ridiculous and simply false.

To finish, whilst money is still the deciding factor if rent is paid, for the most part, ev and quality of play will always take center stage on any strategy discussion, two plus two is full of "nobody cares" repplies to peoples ev moans and ev graphs, because simply sh%t happens and everyone expects it, it doesn't mean we give up or DC memberships and start wearing prayer beads.

[austin5string]

I tried to be philisophical in this post, but it didn't sound right.

so w/e, there is no luck, luck is a fiction to make people feel better about short term results, its merley fluctuations in longterm deviation, nothing more nothing less, in a perfect game where everyone playes perfect, no one cheats, everyone is a clone so there is no differences at all between anyone and anything, its easy for you to say hahah its obvious luck is the only difference, but lol that difference is just a shot term flucation, which will constantly change and evolve until an equilbrium is found, from then or.... or perhaps around that time there will be no change, no one will win, no one will loose, everything will remain stationary. Luck is just statistical deviation it doesn't facour your other anyone or anything else, it just is, your basis your argument upon an equation that isn't finished.

and unless these players are robots, there is an imesne amount of skill from all of them in making sure they are constantly playing perfect, any slip will be taken advtage of, even if these are all bots programmed by the same guy in a test scenario, he his utilizing his skill to ensure an even test, there is always skill and in most things it is significan't and will be a deciding factor in an outcome however long that takes wether it be seconds or decades, luck however although showing impressive fluctuations over time, will never be the deciding factor in the long term because as with water, it always settles and evens out.

You can correctly argue, that the longterm in realistic terms never exists, because it may take a thousand years, but stating that luck is at least as significant as skill without a  time constraing generally is ridiculous and simply false.

To finish, whilst money is still the deciding factor if rent is paid, for the most part, ev and quality of play will always take center stage on any strategy discussion, two plus two is full of "nobody cares" repplies to peoples ev moans and ev graphs, because simply sh%t happens and everyone expects it, it doesn't mean we give up or DC memberships and start wearing prayer beads.

You're not so good with hypothetical discussion, huh?

[TwoToGo-Grave]

@lucky
I don't really agree here.  I think that sure, if you play like a few million ring game hands at a particular game, things will invariably even out, but that only truly applies to pros or very serious amateurs, imo.  Many, many players will only play a relatively few hands at the highest levels that they play(namely when visiting a casino), for instance.  Also, if you're not very well rolled, will the bad runs even out for you?  I'm not sure about that either (and I know that poor br management is a failure on the player's part, but nonetheless).

Furthermore, do MTTs even out?  I'm tempted to think that it would take thousands to truly even out.  Let's say you play a 2k player tourney on P* every night.  You're twice as good as the average player, so it's a profitable tourney, but a good player may win it literally once in a thousand nights.  They may be playing very well and not final table in several hundred.  There just can't be enough sample size for these big field tourneys.  Going along with that, a terrible player who is lucky enough to win one big MTT will never have his good luck even out. ::tries not to utter Jamie Gold's name::  It's just the way that the game works. 

There is certainly an element of luck in poker.  As in all forms of gambling, all that the player can do is put himself in the best position to win.  He can't make himself win.  A 75 percent favorite will not necessarily win 75 times out of 100, of course.  He may well not win 750 times out of 1000.  Enough good bets/moves should even out, but it simply isn't quantifiable and thus there is bound to be at least variation in how players 'run' (even if the variation tends to be very small).

[luckystraights]

luck always evens out, its luck ffs, are you guy's being serious

[luckystraights]

luck always evens out, its luck ffs, are you guy's being serious

I'm not saying there ain't luck in poker, tho I'll default to saying that, because as I've tried to express luck / varriance will always even out in the end, everyones ev will always even out, thus luck plays no factor what so ever, its null and void because its balanced.

Your analyogy of coin flips is ofcource true that sometimes you flip and win 0, sometimes you'll win 60 out of 100 or w/e and it won't be "fair", but play flip enough and you'll always win 50%, assuming nothing devious is going on.

Take pokerstove it simulates events over millions of occurencies and the longer it runs the more accurate the results are, although you might loose QQ vs AK 4 times in one day, as pokerstove will show statistically you'll win a little over 2 out of 4.

and now I'm back to w/e :-)

[TwoToGo-Grave]

With that QQ vs AK, it's not just that you might lose all four in one day, but also that you may lose 600 out of 1000 (assuming you run that many QQ vs. AKs, which many likely won't do in their poker lives).  Also, the particular situations may differ.  Furthermore, how many ring game hands would you say it would take to get a good idea of quality of play without variance?  200k? 500k?  More?  What about the fact that people aren't getting this kind of volume (or close) in a tournament when the real money is at stake?  That certainly will never even out.  Stakes also vary.  I could, conceivably, play 100k hands at $50NL and 100k hands at $100NL and I could run equal in the 200k hands, but run above expectation at one or the other.  Then, I'll either be up or down more than I 'should' be according to variance.  Furthermore, there are so many of the hidden luck factors in every hand that would be extremely difficult to account for (varying from big things like quality of opponents to where seat position to how opponents play individual hands that change the makeup of a hand).  I don't think anybody is saying that luck, rather than skill, decides who is a winning or losing player, but there is luck involved with the game, and luck doesn't necessarily even out either way.  Luck may cause only slight variations to players' lifetime figures (or potentially huge differences when big MTTs are involved), but it seems that is does play some factor.  Also, as far as luck goes, it obviously is the case that luck impacts players, as some simply can't take swings of variance and continue to play their best games without either panicking or falling into excuse mode, so there's another way that luck can (kind of abstractly) affect a player.  None of that may have made sense; I should be asleep right now, after all.

[stooks99]

luck always evens out, its luck ffs, are you guy's being serious

For someone who is pretending none of us have a clue, you sure are missing the point of the thread. 

In every example, we are assuming that skill is completely equal, and the hypothetical situations involve players of equal skill playing at their absolute best.

Yes, we all know luck evens out...yes, we all realize that skilled players win.  But, assuming skill is equal, luck must take over.

[luckystraights]

You have it in your head that something has to take over, this isn't a race, there isn't a take over, there isn't one thing that must be stronger then the over, there just is, equilibrium.

Consider luck, merley a statistical deviation (which I'm pretty sure, is what it is), sure it exists, sure it plays its part, but in the wider / longterm sense, its meaingless because it balances out to a point where it has no impact and thus is irrelevent, irrelevent to a piont where someone can say there is no statistical deviation, there is no luck... drumroll with me now... no luck in poker 

[stooks99]

You have it in your head that something has to take over, this isn't a race, there isn't a take over, there isn't one thing that must be stronger then the over, there just is, equilibrium.

Consider luck, merley a statistical deviation (which I'm pretty sure, is what it is), sure it exists, sure it plays its part, but in the wider / longterm sense, its meaingless because it balances out to a point where it has no impact and thus is irrelevent, irrelevent to a piont where someone can say there is no statistical deviation, there is no luck... drumroll with me now... no luck in poker 

You win.  It's like trying to argue in favor of global warming and the other person keeps saying, "well, it was cold at my house yesterday."

[luckystraights]

You have it in your head that something has to take over, this isn't a race, there isn't a take over, there isn't one thing that must be stronger then the over, there just is, equilibrium.

Consider luck, merley a statistical deviation (which I'm pretty sure, is what it is), sure it exists, sure it plays its part, but in the wider / longterm sense, its meaingless because it balances out to a point where it has no impact and thus is irrelevent, irrelevent to a piont where someone can say there is no statistical deviation, there is no luck... drumroll with me now... no luck in poker 

You win.  It's like trying to argue in favor of global warming and the other person keeps saying, "well, it was cold at my house yesterday."

I feel the same way.

w/e tho

[austin5string]

You have it in your head that something has to take over, this isn't a race, there isn't a take over, there isn't one thing that must be stronger then the over, there just is, equilibrium.

Consider luck, merley a statistical deviation (which I'm pretty sure, is what it is), sure it exists, sure it plays its part, but in the wider / longterm sense, its meaingless because it balances out to a point where it has no impact and thus is irrelevent, irrelevent to a piont where someone can say there is no statistical deviation, there is no luck... drumroll with me now... no luck in poker 

You win.  It's like trying to argue in favor of global warming and the other person keeps saying, "well, it was cold at my house yesterday."

I feel the same way.

w/e tho

So if there's no luck, explain to us the winners of the WSOP Main Events.  Do you honestly contend that they are all the most skilled out of their respective fields?

[luckystraights]

SERIOUSLY, JUST SERIOUSLY?

My reply to this is obvious, and is said or implied in pretty much every post I've ever writtin in this thread and on this subject.

Tho in as simple terms as I can put it...

(Click to show/hide)

sample size

[holdemholmes]

So if there's no luck, explain to us the winners of the WSOP Main Events.  Do you honestly contend that they are all the most skilled out of their respective fields?

Clearly Moneymaker and Gold proved that....  

[luckystraights]

So if there's no luck, explain to us the winners of the WSOP Main Events.  Do you honestly contend that they are all the most skilled out of their respective fields?

Clearly Moneymaker and Gold proved that....  

but who would win gold or moneymaker, now there is a tv tournament worth watching imo

[Jambine]

......So, in a spot where virtually everyone has a very high level of skill, doesn’t it make sense that the winner will more than likely be the person who ran the best?........

To address the OP, YES.  Luck is a big factor Short term.  However, I have to go with Sklansky (T.O.P.) on this one.  ALL profit in poker is Long term.

ALL profit comes from exploiting your opponents errors and minimizing your own errors.  If this group all played every day at exactly the same skill level, after a year, they would be more or less even.

[luckystraights]

wow, did I go the long way round in saying that.

+1

[NotFadeAway]

ALL profit in poker is Long term.

You sure?:

(Click to show/hide)

[Milo]

One tournament, even if played over several days, is the very definition of "short-term".

Sklansky is right.  The Law of Big Numbers states that, over a sufficiently long period of time, "luck" will self-correct and the determining factor of profit or loss, as it relates to poker, will be skill.

[stooks99]

It really seems that everyone has deviated from the original point of the thread. Like I sad earlier, I'm sorry I brought it back up.

[austin5string]

It really seems that everyone has deviated from the original point of the thread. Like I sad earlier, I'm sorry I brought it back up.

FWIW, Stooks, I've been with you on this since the first post.. LOL

[stooks99]

It really seems that everyone has deviated from the original point of the thread. Like I sad earlier, I'm sorry I brought it back up.

FWIW, Stooks, I've been with you on this since the first post.. LOL

TYVM, A5S.  I don't see the problem with the original hypothetical situation.  It would be like saying, if the hoop were bigger in basketball, more points would be scored...and the other guy keeps on saying, 'but people score in basketball all the time!"

[luckystraights]

It really seems that everyone has deviated from the original point of the thread. Like I sad earlier, I'm sorry I brought it back up.

FWIW, Stooks, I've been with you on this since the first post.. LOL

TYVM, A5S.  I don't see the problem with the original hypothetical situation.  It would be like saying, if the hoop were bigger in basketball, more points would be scored...and the other guy keeps on saying, 'but people score in basketball all the time!"

THREAD IS 2+2 LEVEL BS........... W/E

[NotFadeAway]

It really seems that everyone has deviated from the original point of the thread. Like I sad earlier, I'm sorry I brought it back up.

I could be wrong, but I don't think there's any doubt the OP was totally correct, so there's not much to say about it.  I mean, who can argue that 9 players with exactly equal skill=game based solely on luck?

[austin5string]

It really seems that everyone has deviated from the original point of the thread. Like I sad earlier, I'm sorry I brought it back up.

I could be wrong, but I don't think there's any doubt the OP was totally correct, so there's not much to say about it.  I mean, who can argue that 9 players with exactly equal skill=game based solely on luck?

Apparently, Lucky can..

[luckystraights]

It really seems that everyone has deviated from the original point of the thread. Like I sad earlier, I'm sorry I brought it back up.

I could be wrong, but I don't think there's any doubt the OP was totally correct, so there's not much to say about it.  I mean, who can argue that 9 players with exactly equal skill=game based solely on luck?

Apparently, Lucky can..

[RyGuy]

So, in a spot where virtually everyone has a very high level of skill, doesn’t it make sense that the winner will more than likely be the person who ran the best?  Of course, there are many factors that come into play, especially short handed, but I think that if you have a table of the top 20 players on Earth playing their best game, then luck is the only factor that you can say will bring someone out on top.

 

Thoughts?

This was your original proposition.  As I read it, it doesn't say everyone has an identical level of skill, but a "very high level of skill" and "playing their best game[.]"

In those circumstances, my personal belief is that you cannot assume away the marginal differences in skill.  They may be minute, but they are critical, I believe, to determining which player is most likely to win.

The other factor that I think is being missed here is the propensity of even high end, super-talented players to make a mistake.  Over a long, grueling tourney, even the very best player is going to make a mistake or play at less than optimum strategy.  Even if it's not an "out and out" mistake, it may simply be that they picked a slightly less ideal play.  The timing and circumstances of when they make that mistake, all other things being equal, often is also a big influence in determining the outcome (positively or negatively).

Yes, there's a fair amount of "luck" involved in any poker game.  There can be no question about that.  But I think it's reasonable to debate how much "luck" determines the outcome of a fairly equal matchup of players.  And I think it's a bit of an oversimplification to attribute the outcome "mostly" to luck at the expense of understanding the contribution of these marginal differences in skill or the timing of the inevitable mistakes that even highly skilled players will make.