Does Luck Play a part?

does luck really play its part in winning? My personal opinion is yes it does! If it did'nt i would know every card thats gonna be laid down! And i defenetly know that luck doesn't play the whole part! half is just good decision making and knowing when and when not to play! and sometimes when i win a tournament i feel lucky to have made all the right decisions,, some by the seat of my pants lol. my question to myself every win or every loss can i take all the credit for my actions? did i play the best i could? knowing that every action has its opposite or equal reaction for every hand, I Between that i believe theres always a little luck waiting in the wind! feel free to give some opinions back! i would love to hear them

for the most part skill is your entire game. but where drop you think the terms bad beat and suckouts come from? some don't like to call it luck but ihave definetly been at tables where people have had horseshoes up their backside.

I agree the game was built on skill and patience!!! but having those gut feelings that i know everyone feels! that is what i think the little bit of luck comes from! playing hands on that feeling that brings the bad beat of the suckout! most should be lucky that those don't always happen when you play a good game! ( remember these are just my opinions lol )

Every game has luck involved. A wind gust at Wrigley Field. A guessed route by an NFL cornerback to make an interception. A flat tire on a NASCAR wheel. Of course, these sports all take skill also. Just like poker.

If there ain't luck invloved, it's not a "game". It would be called "brain surgery" or "rocket science". All skill and precision.

Calling on a flush draw with "pot odds" - skill
Calling on a flush draw with "pot odds" and hitting when you're "short stacked" and missing only when your stack can absorb the call with no problem - luck

sometimes it takes skill to be really lucky!!!

Luck and skill are both big parts of a poker game at any given time, however over the course of the long run, poker is about more skill than luck.

On any given hand, 90% of it can be luck and 10% of it can be skill. For example, lets say you're holding 7-8 suited, and the flop is a rainbow 4-6-K and your opponent bets about half the size of a pot that is about 5xBB. Now you if you decide to call, with rationale such as you would have the nut straight with a 5 on the turn, whether or not this is good poker or not it is some skill in recognizing that you would have the nut straight at that point. And if you call, and you catch that 5, then that is where the luck part comes in. So, you end up winning the hand largely due to luck, and a little bit of skill.

However, on any given hand, it can also be about 70% skill, and 30% luck. Let's say you're dealt pocket AA. It's where the luck element comes into play, because it is lucky that you're dealt AA. So you raise 4xBB and get two callers. Flop is a 5-10-J rainbow. You bet out, and get one min-reraiser. You decide to call, with a read on him, knowing that he has either a straight draw or a AJ. 2 on the turn, you check the turn, letting him bet out again, and call. Blank on the river, he bets, again, and at this point, knowing you're ahead you reraise all-in. He ends up calling, and you get the maximum value for your hand. This hand was a combination of both skill and luck, but a bit more skill, in making reads and knowing how much to bet to get the maximum value for your hand.

Now, on the course of a long run, there is more skill than luck involved in poker. For example, over the course of about 10,000 it is probably going to be 90% skill, and 10% luck, being the deciding factors on whether or not you're going to be a successful or unsuccessful poker player.

I think that's the best way to put it in perspective, on any given hand it can be 90% luck or 90% skill that gets you through that hand. However, over the course of 10,000 hands it is going to always be 90% skill.

Hope this helped JackAce, I always get a bit mad when people who just started playing poker say that "poker is all luck" or "poker is more luck than skill." You have no idea how many people I've played with here in Vegas, mostly tourists, that say this to me after they just made a huge suckout or something along those lines. But then again, whenever someone says this, I know they're a fish, so that helps as well.

Like Mr Sticker put it, there is pretty much some amount of luck involved in any game. While skill is undoubtedly your best weapon, since it is the only thing you can really control, the best players are able to overcome a weaker players 'good luck' on a pretty consistent basis.