is poker really a game of skill, or is it just luck

I have been playing poker 4 about 3 years and throughout my process of becoming what i would call is a intermediate player i always thought poker was more skill then luck. that is y i played poker and not blackjack or anything else. but after seeing so many 3 and 2 outers backdoor straights and flushdraws hit i have become a little skeptical about how much skill is involved in poker. i would say its about 65% skill 35% luck. what do you all think?

it is neither skill or luck.......one word.....RIGGED...



jk....there is always a luck aspect to the game, anyone can get lucky and you can't prevent a suckout no matter what....but It's pretty obvious that skill over takes luck over time...look at pros for example...why are their always the same faces deep ITM year after year...

If you play a million hands, luck has virtually no influence on your end result. If you play a single one, luck is the overwhelmingly dominant factor. I'm pretty sure there's a spot somewhere in between those two extremes where 65% skill / 35% luck is just spot on.

Like anything in poker it is also about statistics and knowledge of it.
If you are skilled at reading your opponents AND know the statistics then statistically you will have better chance (chance not certainty - Here comes the luck element) of winning.
I think that what makes great players is the combination of the above mentioned.
So statistically it is not only about luck.

(I cannot believe how many times I wrote "statistics" in this answer :-))

You say because poker's about chance you haven't played BlackJack but I think BJ has been proven to be more of a statisticsgame than poker. If you know how to count and can count..

If you play Ohama for instance, the chances are going up, aren't they. But I don't like Ohama because I like the thrill of Texas more.

I think the onlhy thing that counts is palying with other people's cards and minds...Try to bluff them,avoid their good hands or try to get as many as you can from them with the right moves at the right time.I mean act as if you hesitate while having aa's for instance

Well some say that Luck is Preparation meets Opportunity. If you study poker concepts and strategy, have experience in a variety of poker situations then you can't help but get better and have your skill increase over time.

If there wasn't position, pre-flop betting, a flop, turn, and river then poker would be luck. But with all of the added stages and opportunities it gives skill much more leeway to make an impact.

Its clear poker has both luck and skill involved. When I play I don't hope for good luck. I hope I don't have to much bad luck. Gets old having people fill up inside str draws and losing races AK to KQ. But these things happen. Over the long haul skill prevails.

Luck has nothing to do with poker.

Poker is a game of psychology and statistics. PERIOD.

Aggressive players rely on the psychology of powering people off hands, rocks rely on the statistics of their hands holding up. You can say it's lucky for a player to catch a 2 outer, or you can look at the statistics and know that in a hundred hands, they only hit that out one or two times.

What makes online poker so aggravating, is that pot odds are frequently ignored. Pot sized bets are rarely enough to buy people off flush draws, even though they're paying 3-1 while chasing a 5-1 out.

Though it's been said in this forum many times, it bears repeating. We all remember the bad beats at showdown, but we are unable to count the opponents that laid their hands down on the turn or the river where our bets worked. It's impossible to quantify the number times the statistics held up for us.

the guys who posted above me are completely right.

Luck has a very small influence, I'd say a 0 influence on many many hands.
You can lose once, twice, three times, but if you're a skilled player, you'll definitely sooner or later not only get your money back, but you'll earn a profit.

And yes, just have a look at the pros... If they were lucky, you wouldn't have seen them 3, 4, 5 times deep in an tournament... so that says a lot..

But in my opinion there's something else aside skill: talent...

Depends on if you're winning or loosing...


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i vote skill over the long run . but it sure feels like bad luck sometimes. over the short i think more luck is involved, over the long skill comes into play the skill is more knowing the situation and executing in the most beneficial manner to yourself

It's always easy to question ones faith. But poker is 95% skill over the long term. For an opponent to hit a 2 or 3 out draw happens once in 20 times. So the skill is to find the donk who doesn't know when to go away and take his money 19 out of 20 times and be thankful for the suck out so he keeps on feeding the pot.

Luck does play a part in poker no matter what anyone says.

You can be the best in the world and catch a run of bad cards and lose.

Skill is also involved, however the more skillful the player the better his odds of winning in the long haul.

Now match skill with a little luck and you got Phil Helmuth. lol

Poker is 100% skill in the long run. Here you have the classic error of thinking that winning pots is the goal, but it's really winning MONEY.

Here is a good argument for skill:

IS THERE REALLY ANY LUCK IN POKER?
by Annie Duke

My brother, Howard Lederer, and I have recently been having some really interesting discussions about the luck factor in poker. Now we all know that there is skill in poker but the general consensus has been that there is a preponderance of skill, not that poker is a game that is all skill. Arguments for the preponderance of skill have centered on the fact that good players, in the long run, will come out winners but in the short run anyone can win. So the argument has been that poker is a game with a significant luck factor in the short run but over the long run the law of large numbers will play out and the better players will win.
But is this really true? Is there really any luck in the short run at all? Howard has come up with a very compelling argument that the answer to that question is no.

Let's say we program a machine so that it knows the rules of Texas Hold'em. It knows that you are dealt two cards. It knows that a flop, and a turn and a river comprise the community cards. It knows that you can check, bet, call or raise on any given street. It knows the rules and mechanics of the game. But let's also say that we program the machine to play with no skill at all. This means that the machine will randomly choose at any given decision point whether to check, bet, call or raise. Now remember, on any given street there are up to 5 possible decisions (a bet and four raises) and our machine will behaving randomly, with no skill, at any of those decision points. How would the machine do? Terribly, obviously.

If you put our machine into a short event, like a sit and go, against 8 skilled players it would lose every time. The skilled players would quickly come up with the most effective strategy against the machine, which would be to raise the minimum against the machine every time. This would always put the decision back on the machine for the lowest risk and 1/3 of the time the machine will fold, 1/3 it will call and 1/3 it will raise, regardless of its hand. And the machine will behave this way regardless of its hand. It will be as likely to fold Aces full as it will to fold 9 high. It will be as likely to call with top pair as I will to call with 5 high. You can see pretty quickly that our unskilled machine would never win, even in the short run.

Howard's argument shows that poker players tend to drastically over estimate the luck factor in poker, mainly because in general we are playing against very skilled players and whenever we close the skill gap between opponents in a skill game it appears that there is more luck involved. We can take baseball as an example to demonstrate this. No one argues that baseball is not a game of skill. And the same thing happens in baseball when we narrow the skill gap that happens in poker. If we take the Yankees and pit them against a little league team where the skill gap is very large then the Yankees will win every time. But if we take the Yankees and pit them against an equally skilled major league team, say the Red Sox, now luck appears to play a much larger factor. Factors like injuries, weather, etc. now play a much larger role in determining the outcome of the game. While the better team will win over a series of games, the outcome of a single game will appear to be determined by luck, by factors outside of the control of the teams.

And poker is no different. Good poker players will overestimate the luck factor in poker because they forget exactly how skilled the opponents they are playing against are. The fact is that most players are very skilled at hand selection and betting theory that you play against, even in the smallest games, compared to a totally unskilled player like our machine. As in baseball, the more skilled the players are that you play against, the more there will be the appearance of luck in determining the outcome in the short run. To take the baseball analogy further, if we take the very best professional player in the world and stick them in a .50/$1 NL game, they will crush the game just as the Yankees will crush the little league team. If we take that same player and pit them against the other top pros, they will win in the long run, but the short run outcome will be largely determined by luck just as in baseball in a similar situation when the Yankees play the Red Sox the outcome will be determined by factors like injuries.

The interesting thing is that if we took our same unskilled machine and programmed it to know the rules of the lottery but gave it no skill it would perform the same as a human being. This is because there is no skill to the lottery. Once you know to purchase the ticket and fill out the appropriate number of circles on the ticket and give it back to the attendant to receive your ticket you are good to go. Once you know the rules there is nothing more to the game. And yet, lotteries are excluded in the current gaming legislation but poker is at risk. Seems illogical to me.

Poker is a game of skill. It is a game where the outcome is as determined by skill as baseball. Once we understand this, it is clear poker should be set aside from gaming legislation that legislates games of chance since it is clearly not a game of chance. It is just a matter of getting people to truly and deeply understand the difference between games of skill and games of luck.

I agree I mean a 12 year old could go all in with 7 3 and catch a full house. But over time you will PLACE way more often then a person that is good at suck outs lol. Keep in mind most of those "lucky players" don't have to skill for statistics, seeing tells and betting habits.

Replace 'aggravating' with 'profitable', and you've got something.

Who was it that said--"If it weren't for luck, I'd win every time"? Oh yeh, Phil Helmuth! And why is it I don't do well at donk fests but DO do well at cash ring games?? I'd say 'cuz a' the Luck of the donks who have no skill in the donk fests--combined w/my BAD luck!

LOL True dat

short term luck can be a factor long term skill is the winner