I have a question about luck in live tournaments

How much luck do you think is involved in winning a Tx Holdem No Limit live tournament? What percentage of luck is involved in winning the whole tournament in your opinion?

Naturaly luck is a good factor, good players make a lot of their own luck. Hard for me to nail down a percentage becasue it also depends on the number of players. The scale is very heavily tipped towards the skill side.

Not sure if you want a quantified percentage (or if it's even possible to give a % for that), but I'd just say if you are a winning MTT player, then lots of luck is needed to win. If you're an inexperienced/losing MTT player, then TONS of luck would be needed to win it, ie it's not really worth your time unless you're in it for fun.

thanks adventure. Let me ask you what do you think the percentage of luck is involved in winning the World Series of Poker? Several of my friends think that 90 percent is luck in order to win it; I think it is more like 20 percent luck myself. Making great decisions like knowing when to lay down a hand is where the skill comes into play.

thank ChuckT. Can you give me your answer on what percentage you think luck is involved in winning the WS of poker? thanks

I have no idea, nor do I know if you can even do that. Like say it takes X percent luck to win it. I have no idea how to guesstimate that.

I can however say that MTTs require a good degree of luck, and that's why they're generally really not that consistent of a money maker for most people.

I think with a field as large as the Main Event you'd rather be lucky than good. Probably 70% luck to actually win it.

thanks for the reply with your actual percentage WVhillbilly

Jamie Gold comes to mind...

I call it luck, but I also think that with practice, many thousands of hands, and over time, ones sense of intuition is also better.

My personal opinion, for what it's worth, is that it looks like luck from the outside, and it probably is, but there's also a zone of knowing that one gets into where the actual two cards matter a little less.

Or perhaps this is my new rationalization because of my recent bad play.

Yes.

As for the number it's just a WAG but that's what you asked for.

Definetly you need more luck than skill. I played the $24K guarentee last night at Full Tilt and won 3 all in preflop coinflips late in a tournament in a row, very lucky. But even doubling up 3 times wasn't good enough to go really deep. I ended up placing like 150th out of 1400 players and at least got my buyin back plus a few bucks.

To calculate the % of luck needed to win the WSOP main event, is almost impossible. Think about it, 5K+ players, Top professionals, internet qualifiers, donks etc. To get anywhere near the final table you need to win a lot of all in's. You have to win all the ones which your ahead in the hand pf, and you will have to win a fair few were you will be behind, even with one card to come.

So with huge fields like this you will have to be really lucky to get the final table, never mind winning the thing. If you look at the other events at the WSOP, with much smaller fields and more specialist events, you see the top names making the final table time and time again. The luck factor in this instance has been reduced somewhat, because the cream is rising to the top so to speak, due to reduced fields and inexperience in the event. The main event is almost a lottery.

What IS considered the most consistent money maker for most people? Cash tables?

Yep, probably. Different game types have differing levels of variance, for ex PLO is a much higher variance game than NLHE because you're playing with much smaller edges.

Thanks ChuckTs

Do you think more money can be made online or in RL? The obvious advantage of being online is being able to play more hands (and possibly have more stats readily available). But playing in person allows for more information to read players with. Thoughts?

2 words: Jamie Gold

I was watching the coverage of the 2004 Main Event the other night, and Dan Harrington was talking about this exact concept.

He figured he was one of the best, if not the best, players going into the final table. But he only had 8% of the chips. So he figured that gave him at best a 16% chance of taking out the title.

Take that back to the start of Day 1 - in a field of 6000-odd people, you've got 0.00016% of the chips to start with. So say you're a truly awesome player, better than absolutely everyone else in the field. Four times the tournament player Harrington is. You're still less than 0.01% to win.

That makes luck more than 99% of the equation.

Shrink the field size, and maybe that number comes down. The skilled players will do well more often than unskilled ones, but luck will still be the major deciding factor.

The original question is too open ended. Luck would need to be defined, which is as difficult as defining GOD.

Suppose you bet big with KK, get called, and the flop shows an ACE. Are you lucky you got the KK? Are you lucky you got called by QQ? Did the donk who called with A6o get lucky?

Define luck, and it can probably be predicted.

If someone said it was 40% then 2 out of 5 hands would be yours without ever looking at your cards.

Now, putting yourself into positions to get lucky is a whole new ballgame. But that can get expensive. Suppose you wanted Barry Bonds Last Home Run ball. You could have bought every seat in the right field bleacher seats, then closed it off to anyone but yourself. Incidentally, that would have been a +EV move had someone thought to do it.

But even that would only increase you chances of getting that home run ball, he has hit many fair balls into the bay.

Point is, if you can describe it, someone can predict it.