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Where does poker fit in the Skill to Luck range? Poll is created on Sep 10, 2015

  
  
  
  
  

poker.... Luck or Skill ?

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xenomorphic
Joined: 29.12.2010

it is very well known that poker is a game of skill and luck. you control whether to check/fold/call and not only whether or not you bet or raise but also by how much. you also control what hands you play - there is a clear advantage to learning even the basics that will give many ppl a pretty big edge. if it sounds like i'm stating the obvious, that's kinda the point. in poker where you have control there is the potential for skill - wherever you don't, you simply have variance (or what some ppl like to refer to as luck).

simple answer: "yes"


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batnuuts12
Joined: 08.09.2015

only answer if you have a solid argument based on knowledge, not faith, please ...no matter if the answer is yes or no ...I'm happy to let anyone convince me either way ...but please actually convince me with rational arguments, not mere beliefs …and no percentages, please …luck cannot be measured, not even in percentages ...and no success stories of your last:f_drink:


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Super Moderator
VorpalF2F
Joined: 02.09.2010

Hi, batnuuts12,
Welcome to PokerStrategy.com!

Well, for the most part, answers were logical and reasoned.
In all fairness to those who posted percentages, the OP was not in English, and Google Translate's English rendering was less intelligible than the German.
Until Harrier88's translation, we didn't have a lot to go on.

And actually, luck CAN be quantified.
The statistical concept is called "Variance" and is defined as "the square of the standard deviation" (source: variance)
Bogdan did a video on this that is for Silver Status and above.

Several important points from the video:
:diamond:  Your true win rate will vary. How much it varies depends on several factors
:diamond:  Regardless of how good your true win rate is, your experienced win rate will vary both up and down from your true win rate
:diamond:  The variance averages out over the number of hands you play
:diamond:  Stated another way: The more hands you play, the more important skill becomes.
:diamond:  Assuming a number of players with the same "true" win rate and assume millions of hands, the upswings and downswings even out.

Here is a screenshot from the video:

This is a graph of a plot created with a tool called EVplusplus.
It used to be available on line, but all I could find was a site offering to let me download it, but I'm sure it was an online too.

I added the yellow line.
Each line represents a single player, using the same base winrate.
Note that the bulk of the players -- over about 41400 hands -- is above the yellow line.
One of them won about 7500 BB (about 18 BB/100) (and he probably thinks he really is that good :coolface: )
One of them lost about 2500 BB (about -6 BB/100)
Since this is mathematical it represents the spread of luck.

Elsewhere in the video he shows other aspects of luck such as longest downswing, deepest downswing and so on.

So yes, it is improper to put percentages on the components. But poker is very clearly a game where skill can dominate the very, very real luck aspect of the game.

It is extremely important to keep that concept in mind. The bottom line in the image represents a player who would likely give up -- not knowing that he was doing everything right. Worse, he might change HOW he plays and make the situation worse. I have noticed this myself, that I can be trapped into becoming passive when I've taken a few bad beats. But NOT aggressively betting your high-equity hands is a huge leak.

A player's control of himself is another skill aspect of poker. I wish I had this tool.
I would love to see how many hands it takes before the lowest player goes break even.

Since this image represents the mathematical probability of winning poker hands, I'm going to assume that truly skilled players can do better than the math -- in other words, minimizing their losses by getting out of risky situations before they cost them too much.

Cheers,
VS


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Gawdless73
Joined: 11.09.2015

Of course there is some luck involved but skill and mostly making the right calls over the long run will beat it.


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