Poker...Is it a game of skill or luck?

[zinfamous]

I would say more luck than skill. it takes skill to consistently win with bad hands, but most of the super pros--meaning, those that actually win substantial money, will mention how many times they actually lose matches and tournaments.

I think it's far greater than their actual wins. That should tell you all that you need to know.

 

[AMDZen]

Yeah, you're mostly right. Back in the day though, before the WSoP is what it is now, it was mostly the same players, every year. Now there's such a huge draw, there's new players all the time at the final table.

I agree. I think Poker used to be a game of mostly skill, but then everyone learned how to play and the margin between the n00bs and the pros is smaller now. And thats why its mostly luck now.

 

[Juked07]

You didn't answer the question.
So is the stock market skill or luck?

If what you say is true in comparing poker to the stock market, then I will say both but mostly skill.

I've never played poker since I had it on my TI-83+ calculator in 200-2002.
I wouldn't know how to play poker today if someone asked me to.

It's a terrible question to begin with. If we quantify what it means for something to "have" luck, or even have a certain percentage of luck, maybe we can actually have a meaningful question. Ratio of expectation to standard deviation (Sharpe's ratio)? Over what sample size? It's just a BS issue for politicians to be discussing. They don't understand the game, they don't understand the distribution of payouts given different skill levels, they likely don't understand game theory at all.

The government should appoint some statisticians to discuss the issue with some well versed poker lobbyists and hash the issue out. Subjectively discussing whether something is "luck" is totally the wrong approach.

EDIT: Same thing with the stock market. Everyone knows that the stock market has risk (does this mean "luck"?) and also expected gains. That is, there is a distribution of returns centered around a positive number. And everyone is fine with that. No one thinks that we should determine whether there is "luck" in the stock market and then ban investing if yes. It's just ridiculous.

 

[HardcoreRobot]

in the long term, skill
in the short term, luck

 

[MikeyLSU]

I would say more luck than skill. it takes skill to consistently win with bad hands, but most of the super pros--meaning, those that actually win substantial money, will mention how many times they actually lose matches and tournaments.

I think it's far greater than their actual wins. That should tell you all that you need to know.

if it is a game of luck then if you were matched up against a pro(or at a tournament of 9 with 8 other pros)

You feel you would have an equal chance at winning? And that in a heads up you will win 50% of the time?

 

[zinfamous]

The WSOP event will have something like 15,000 people enter it this year, that's the only reason the final table's filled with non pros. It's more skill than luck, but when the armature's out number the pros 1,000 to 1 sometimes skill isn't enough. If you started a tournament that was 4 tables of amateurs and 4 tables of pros. I would be surprised if there was a single amateur at the final table. And in a heads up game of a pro vs a non pro I'd bet on the pro every time, sure I'd get loses occasionally if I did this, but 95/100 games I'd come out ahead.

A few years ago, maybe 4, the guy who won the WSOP was an amateur. The story as I heard it was he went crazy at the casinos in the high stakes room and lost all his winnings in a matter of 2 days. It was over a million dollars, where a pro like Ivey or Brunson can consistently win money.

Here's Lindgren, Negreanu, and Harmon saying that it's mostly luck, and telling you that they lose far more than they win. Not really consistent.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/07/11/050711fa_fact_conley

And, here's a cool article talking about game theory applied to poker--with practice, a very real skill-based approach that could tilt the favor to skill.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_wilkinson

sorry, only abstracts for non-subscribers. :\

 

[Juked07]

I agree. I think Poker used to be a game of mostly skill, but then everyone learned how to play and the margin between the n00bs and the pros is smaller now. And thats why its mostly luck now.

People have gotten better, but they're still horrible on average. And horrible is a disgustingly inadequate understatement. The expectation a pro would have against the typical 1/2 NL player at AC or Vegas has to constitute robbery.

Even a mediocre student of poker such as myself dominates those games over significant samples. I can't imagine how trivial they are for someone who really knows his stuff.

(As a disclaimer, 1/2 NL live games are the softest games I have ever seen outside of playing with friends in like middle school. I think even 1c/2c games online might be tougher).

 

[sdifox]

Here's Lindgren, Negreanu, and Harmon saying that it's mostly luck, and telling you that they lose far more than they win. Not really consistent.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/07/11/050711fa_fact_conley

And, here's a cool article talking about game theory applied to poker--with practice, a very real skill-based approach that could tilt the favor to skill.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_wilkinson

sorry, only abstracts for non-subscribers. :\

dude, copy and paste

 

[Via]

Texas Hold 'em is the game that has exploded Poker's popularity, but I find it the game that involves the most luck of any type of Poker.

If luck plays no part why are Poker pros starting a Poker league to keep noobs out? If the game was all skill they wouldn't need to.

 

[Capt Caveman]

I would say more luck than skill. it takes skill to consistently win with bad hands, but most of the super pros--meaning, those that actually win substantial money, will mention how many times they actually lose matches and tournaments.

I think it's far greater than their actual wins. That should tell you all that you need to know.

Most pros don't make their money in tournaments.

 

[zinfamous]

if it is a game of luck then if you were matched up against a pro(or at a tournament of 9 with 8 other pros)

You feel you would have an equal chance at winning? And that in a heads up you will win 50% of the time?

no way. Like I said, there is definitely skill involved. Luck separates the pros, I think.

and as pros have said, they still lose more than they win. I think that is where luck comes in.

They may be wealthy, but that's because they win the large pots at a higher concentration than the smaller pots, which they will lose frequently.

 

[zinfamous]

dude, copy and paste

the articles are published page by page.

:hmm: maybe I can still do that. They are long as hell, though.

bah! I forgot that they went to a digital PDF format a year or so ago.

 

[Juked07]

no way. Like I said, there is definitely skill involved. Luck separates the pros, I think.

and as pros have said, they still lose more than they win. I think that is where luck comes in.

They may be wealthy, but that's because they win the large pots at a higher concentration than the smaller pots, which they will lose frequently.

Saying that losing more than win implies luck is ludicrous. If you enter a tournament of 15,000 players a million times, and you win 499,999 times I would say you are RIDICULOUSLY AWESOMELY SKILLED, no questions asked. You don't have to win more than you lose to demonstrate that you have skill. In fact, winning statistically significantly more than 1/n, where n is the number of players, demonstrates that the decision making process you use (your "skill") has a statistically significant effect on your outcome. Subjectively, this is a demonstration of skill.

What is a demonstration of luck? Can anyone quantify this? If it is that outcomes do not always converge on expectation, especially over small sample sizes, of course there is luck, no question about it could ever be seen as anything but obtuse. But if that is the definition of luck, it has basically NO significance whatsoever. Almost everything in life is a random process of this nature. That does not discount it in any way. And in that sense, it is a totally meaningless question. So seriously, can anyone quantify what it means to be characterized by luck?

 

[silverpig]

there is no doubt there is skill involved.

I would say about 75% skill, 25% luck.

No one person can win all the time. But with good enough skill, you can put yourself in a position to win at a decent rate.

I promise you if you take one of the pros and sit them at a table with 9 random people in this thread to play poker, they will win the tournament 75%+ of the time.

Hell, in my home game, I consistantly win or place second in well over half of the games we play. Luck can not account for that.

How many people are in your home games? Cause if it's 4 then coming in first or second half the time is what is expected. Well over half could be luck and not be unexpected if you haven't played a lot of games.

 

[silverpig]

The WSOP event will have something like 15,000 people enter it this year, that's the only reason the final table's filled with non pros. It's more skill than luck, but when the armature's out number the pros 1,000 to 1 sometimes skill isn't enough. If you started a tournament that was 4 tables of amateurs and 4 tables of pros. I would be surprised if there was a single amateur at the final table. And in a heads up game of a pro vs a non pro I'd bet on the pro every time, sure I'd get loses occasionally if I did this, but 95/100 games I'd come out ahead.

A few years ago, maybe 4, the guy who won the WSOP was an amateur. The story as I heard it was he went crazy at the casinos in the high stakes room and lost all his winnings in a matter of 2 days. It was over a million dollars, where a pro like Ivey or Brunson can consistently win money.

Do the same thing with tennis and I bet you $50 that Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic are in the final 8, 99 times out of 100.

 

[wheresmybacon]

I think your last two paragraphs disproved your claim in the second. Yes, it is hard to place a player like that on a hand, and in that case it is difficult to play exactly correctly against his particular hand. But we never play against a particular hand anyway. Given a set of information (and you have fairly complete information on this player as an example), we are only informed of a probability distribution of the hands an opponent can hold. Knowing that a player uniformly holds any possible hand is great. It makes it easy to have very good expectation against him. Of course there is variance, but the correct play is ridiculously easy to find (generally just aggressive with strong hands, get out with very weak). And the fact that he busts 20/21 times demonstrates that he is free money at the table.

EDIT: And I don't mean to pick on your post. I just wanted to emphasize that poker inherently has variance, but that we should make decisions facing this variance to maximize the expected value of our result. Even in cases where there is a great deal of uncertainty (player can have any two cards for Christ's sake), we can secure a great deal of expectancy. How does this relate to far more imprecise terms such as "skill" and "luck" I don't really know. Who gives a shit? We should just understand the game as it is, and subjective terms like "luck" really aren't that relevant.

Poker is simply a process with a mean and standard deviation, maybe even some skew and kurtosis. It doesn't need to be treated as anything different. Why aren't people asking the same thing about investing in your 401k? It has a mean and standard deviation underlying it as well.

Your post is true, but most amateurs, myself included, can't eliminate the human elements that cause us to play badly; pride and ego being chief there. It isn't as easy in practice as it is talking about here in a forum. How do I lay down top pair top kicker against a drunk guy I know who'll call me with literally anything? Sure I win most of the time but it's the time I don't win and I get knocked out that I get enraged over.

And this is why the pros are pros and I'm an amateur. Not only have they forgotten more than I know, they're much more disciplined and robotic. They may feel a certain way but they don't let it affect their game. They don't go "on tilt". Getting angry in a poker game isn't going to make you play better. You can't "try harder".

 

[Juked07]

Your post is true, but most amateurs, myself included, can't eliminate the human elements that cause us to play badly; pride and ego being chief there. It isn't as easy in practice as it is talking about here in a forum. How do I lay down top pair top kicker against a drunk guy I know who'll call me with literally anything? Sure I win most of the time but it's the time I don't win and I get knocked out that I get enraged over.

And this is why the pros are pros and I'm an amateur. Not only have they forgotten more than I know, they're much more disciplined and robotic. They may feel a certain way but they don't let it affect their game. They don't go "on tilt". Getting angry in a poker game isn't going to make you play better. You can't "try harder".

Why would you ever lay down TPTK vs someone who can hold any two? Bet bet bet (and make sure you bet big enough! if he's not folding you better get rich on this hand). You're playing it right. Your negative emotional response to sometimes losing is sort of a waste of energy, as you've acknowledged, but it sounds like you're making mad dough in that spot vs this guy, because you're playing it perfectly.

Sure, "pros" may feel differently or think differently in that situation, but you have both identified the opportunity and would make the right choice that maximizes your expectation. In both cases, we have a great demonstration of how a difference in skill leads to good results!

--------------------------------

And I draw a line because what follows is not really a response to your post, but just further thoughts on the whole discussion:

Where is the luck? Is it the negative emotions that are associated with the small probability of getting hit by a bad outcome? There must be a better word for that. Perhaps "bad beat" is a good one. Bad beats do happen. But that has no effect on the characteristics of poker payouts: mean, standard dev, skew if you're really diligent about it. That's all we really need to know about the distribution to make regulatory decisions about it.

How does "skill" vs "luck" fit in to the discussion? If anything it detracts attention from the real quantifiable issues.

 

[gorcorps]

How likely is it for two players to be dealt hands good enough for them to be extremely confident? If that is the only situation in which you can say for certain that luck trumps skill, then luck is a tiny part of the game.
Besides, look at how much betting and stuff takes place pre-flop. Plenty of bad pre-flop hands would be great if they just wait for the flop, but in many cases they fold before they can even see. So that takes a lot of the luck out of it.

The statistically worst hand, 7-2 off suit, can still result in two pair, three of a kind, or a full house on the flop, but it rarely gets played because those almost never happen.

Watch some poker sometime. I've seen people go all-in with horrible hands because they know it'll get their opponent to back down. That has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with skill. It's all about assessing not just what the other players might have in their hands, but how risk-averse they are at the moment. Someone who's low on chips and fighting to get back in the game will play differently from someone who is sitting pretty.

I know! THAT'S MY WHOLE FUCKING POINT!

I'm saying that it takes more skill, but there's still SOME chance involved at SOME points in the game. What I said is extremely unlikely, but not impossible... that means there's at least one outcome where pure chance is involved.

I can't believe the extremes you guys are taking with what I say. I've said time and time and time again that IT STILL TAKES MORE SKILL THAN LUCK. Absolutely 1000% agree with that... but saying chance has absolutely nothing to do with it EVER is just simply wrong. That's all I'm saying.

 

[Avalon]

100% luck, no skill involved.

 

[dank69]

I know! THAT'S MY WHOLE FUCKING POINT!

I'm saying that it takes more skill, but there's still SOME chance involved at SOME points in the game. What I said is extremely unlikely, but not impossible... that means there's at least one outcome where pure chance is involved.

I can't believe the extremes you guys are taking with what I say. I've said time and time and time again that IT STILL TAKES MORE SKILL THAN LUCK. Absolutely 1000% agree with that... but saying chance has absolutely nothing to do with it EVER is just simply wrong. That's all I'm saying.

Deep breaths, bro. I know you think it is mostly skill and only a little luck. I just disagree. What cards you get is luck. Poker is not about playing your cards.

 

[Juked07]

I know! THAT'S MY WHOLE FUCKING POINT!

I'm saying that it takes more skill, but there's still SOME chance involved at SOME points in the game. What I said is extremely unlikely, but not impossible... that means there's at least one outcome where pure chance is involved.

I can't believe the extremes you guys are taking with what I say. I've said time and time and time again that IT STILL TAKES MORE SKILL THAN LUCK. Absolutely 1000% agree with that... but saying chance has absolutely nothing to do with it EVER is just simply wrong. That's all I'm saying.

Really? Your point was to provide one example where chance matters? It matters in every hand. What cards come up affect the strength of each player's hand (or range of hands, since their opponents only perceive a distribution of hands he could hold) at every stage in the game. And those cards are unknown until they are dealt, and they are dealt randomly. Of COURSE it matters which cards are randomly dealt.

But is this your definition of luck? If yes, it is meaningless and trivial. Outcomes of basketball shots are unknown when taken. Outcomes of stock market returns are unknown. Outcomes of running a race are unknown. All of these have aspects of randomness to them, but that doesn't make people ponder irrelevant issues of "skill" vs "luck". People recognize that these things take skill, but are characterized by some degree of randomness. This sort of "luck" is inherent in almost everything we do, and pointing out that poker has it demonstrates so little I can't believe people are talking about it.

Surely there is some other definition of luck that makes this discussion more meaningful...

 

[AstroManLuca]

I know! THAT'S MY WHOLE FUCKING POINT!

I'm saying that it takes more skill, but there's still SOME chance involved at SOME points in the game. What I said is extremely unlikely, but not impossible... that means there's at least one outcome where pure chance is involved.

I can't believe the extremes you guys are taking with what I say. I've said time and time and time again that IT STILL TAKES MORE SKILL THAN LUCK. Absolutely 1000% agree with that... but saying chance has absolutely nothing to do with it EVER is just simply wrong. That's all I'm saying.

We got here by everyone using extremely broad-brush arguments and not reading or understanding each other's posts.

I don't think anyone would argue it's 100% skill or luck. You're not, no one else is (or should be, since it's obvious there's plenty of both at work).

I think it's just a case of several people in the thread being unable to conceive of someone holding an opinion that isn't 100% in one direction or another.

If someone says it takes more skill than luck, they're not implying it takes 100% skill and 0% luck. The inverse is also true - if someone says luck is more important, they're not saying skill is unimportant.

Also as others have pointed out, luck is a major factor in pro sports and many other things as well.

EDIT: And just so you're aware, I'm not arguing with you either.

 

[dank69]

...
I don't think anyone would argue it's 100% skill or luck. ... If someone says it takes more skill than luck, they're not implying it takes 100% skill and 0% luck. ...

That's exactly what I am implying.

 

[Juked07]

Deep breaths, bro. I know you think it is mostly skill and only a little luck. I just disagree. What cards you get is luck. Poker is not about playing your cards.

These responses reek of players who like to think they can look into people's eyes and know everything, and have watched Rounders once or twice..

In order of importance for making the right choice in poker:
Level 0: Your cards
Level 1: Your perception of your opponents range (probability distribution) of cards, given everything you know from their action in this hand and previous hands
Level 2: Your opponent's perception of your range
Level 3: Your opponent's perception of your perception of his range
Etc.

Separate from these levels: Your perception of what actions they will take given your understanding of the above.

(As a side note Negreanu once claimed to think on 15-20 levels but I think that's BS).

Playing the "player" just means analyzing their past decisions to find out how their tendencies differ from the typical player. And finding physical tells simply informs your perception of their range (or other higher level thinking). The cards and the ranges of cards that your opponent can hold are paramount! In fact if you get to showdown, the cards are the ONLY thing that matters.

Why do people act like cards don't matter? Skill does matter but this does not mean cards do not.

 

[wantedSpidy]

The problem is when people use the WRONG sample size to make this determination. Imagine a crappy golfer. Can this golfer get 'lucky' and score an eagle? Sure thing, it can happen. Now if you just analyze that one shot you would say golf is a game of LUCK, and not skill. However when you look at results of over 100+ shots or a couple of rounds at the golf course, you see the distinction between luck and skill and how golf really is a game of skill.

Similarly in poker, sample size is in the tens of thousands of hands, not in one hand. Also the metric for measuring success is not number of hands won, but rather number of big blinds/money won. Sure you can get REALLY lucky and win some hands, or just not fold your hand and bluff catch all the way through - and get lucky because your opponent happened to be bluffing.

Poker is a game of skill and it becomes apparent with continuous play. Another important aspect of poker is that there is a historical element because players keep adapting with time.