is poker basedon skill or luck

i my self think its mainly on luck . ive made the right calls so many times to get beat on the river or some stupid runner runner crap.to many unskilled players getting their prayers answered.it makes me so sick 2 see the person making the right call losing on a bs call.

i laugh in the face of your question

1 hand = 100% luck
a career = skilled base
luck is inversely porportion to the amount of hands played and time spent on felt

If you play 2,000 hands: luck outweighs skill
If you play 500,000 hands: skill outweighs luck

Hint: it's about winning MONEY, not winning HANDS.

Example: lose 0.10, lose 0.20, lose 0.15, lose 0.05, lose 0.50, win 2.00; you are 1-5 for your record, but up 1.00 in actual money.

It there were no bad beat, then bad players wouldn't play, and there would be no profitable poker. If you are not winning enough OTHER hands where the money compensates for the statistically inevitable bad beats, then maybe you should take a look at your game and try to find some leaks, instead of blaming the outside "luck" factor for your failure.

aliengenius said:

Hint: it's about winning MONEY, not winning HANDS.

Example: lose 0.10, lose 0.20, lose 0.15, lose 0.05, lose 0.50, win 2.00; you are 5-1 for your record, but up 1.00 in actual money.

It there were no bad beat, then bad players wouldn't play, and there would be no profitable poker. If you are not winning enough OTHER hands where the money compensates for the statistically inevitable bad beats, then maybe you should take a look at your game and try to find some leaks, instead of blaming the outside "luck" factor for your failure.

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Actually that's 1-5

SankTheTank said:

Actually that's 1-5

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edited

I tend to think there is more luck in poker, than say backgammon. Nevertheless, there is certainly an art to the game, and the better poker players seem to rise to the top, even with the "luck" variance.

Luck is only probability taken personally. Write that down!

To quote Gary Carson, "You're betting money on the turn of a card."

Double-A said:

To quote Gary Carson, "You're betting money on the turn of a card."

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With that being said, its still a gamble. You just have to be smart enough and SKILLED enough to know if your gamble is worth it.

Ur always gonna need luck in poker to be succesful just look at Chip reese (who was one of the best in the world) all the luck he needed to win his last bracelet. But in my opimion if u really want to make it in poker u skill just look at Moneymaker and Gold they had all the luck in the world to win the wsop main event but what have they done since not a damn thing. Why bc they have no skill they were one hit wonders.

The last few hands of LOLdonkaments in massive tournaments are incredibly bad examples of luck in poker.

Sure there is luck in poker, but the skilled players in the long run will *always* make more money than the short term *lucky* players.

Chris_TC said:

If you play 2,000 hands: luck outweighs skill
If you play 500,000 hands: skill outweighs luck

Click to expand...

aliengenius said:

Hint: it's about winning MONEY, not winning HANDS.

Example: lose 0.10, lose 0.20, lose 0.15, lose 0.05, lose 0.50, win 2.00; you are 1-5 for your record, but up 1.00 in actual money.

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So what would be the over all percentage that luck plays into the winning players' winning? Can it be quantified? 30% luck v 70% skill or 40/60 and so on?
Luck outweighs skill or vice versa but by how much?

I think Mike McDermott put it best: "Why do you think the same five guys make it to the final table of the world series of poker EVERY YEAR? What, are they the luckiest guys in Las Vegas?"

I don't know who said it, but i believe it, its better to be lucky than good. Therefore if your both your set

Short term: plenty of luck
Long term: almost 0 luck.

So you may run horrible in cash games for a while, but you will also have times when you will run super hot. There will be times where it seems every time you hit 2 pair somebody rivers a higher 2 pair or hits a set, and everytime you hit a set it is an under set or somebody hits a flush draw, but there will also be times when you are on the good end of every cooler. There will be times when you will lose almost every hand where you get your money in as a favourite and there will be times where it seems that you simply cannot lose a pot. There will also be times where it seems that the villain hits the top of his/her range every time, and likewise there will be times when it seems they constantly hit the bottom of their range.

But over a long period of time, when you get your money in at a 2:1 favourite, you will win that pot 2 out of 3 times. And in the long term, when you get the money in when you dominate your opponent's range, you will come out on top.

Tournaments are a different boat. You have to get REALLY lucky to go deep in an MTT...ie. you must get good cards, your hands must hold up etc. Over the 5 or so hrs it might take to place high in an MTT, you'll be all in playing for stacks (or close enough to it that you probably won't recover) several times. Even if you have AA vs KK 5 times in an MTT, unless you get a little lucky you could very well be out. You also will be forced to take stupid flips at times, because that is just how tournaments work.

But the same applies...over long term there is little luck in MTTs. Eventually you'll get that magic tournament...i just think that long term for MTTs is quite a big higher than for cash games, because luck is fairly inherent when blinds are so crucial. You could play 10k hands and call it fairly long term for cash games (tho sure you could run bad over the entire stretch) but you couldn't call 100 MTTs long term.

We are debating this?

this is a provable statistical question with a well defined answer which has more or less already been given.

luck, assuming you are playing mathematically correct poker, is inversely proportional to hands played.

so... *ahem*

luck = 1/#hands

and (as a relatively simple mathematical exercise)

the limit as hands played approaches infinity is 0 in the above.

In other words...the more hands you play, the smaller a factor luck becomes. If you get close to "infinity" (which is of course impossible, so what we really mean is..as your hands played gets really *really* high), your luck factor gets closer and closer and closer to zero until it is effectively indistinguishable from zero.


This is a simplified version of things but it's basically the truth. This however assumes that you are skilled enough to minimize errors in your play. Noone can fully do this but again people can get close. The closer your play is to "perfect" in a mathematical sense, the truer the above is.

Since noone plays perfectly, the farther away from "perfect" their play is enhances the luck factor further despite the number of hands played even though if there is at least some skill then hands played still minimizes but will never eliminate the luck factor.


Cliff notes version: if you know what you are doing luck is almost completely eliminated as a factor for you in the long term. It is king for *anybody* in the short term.


/in a weird mood tonight
//the kinda mood where I want to go work on some difficult statistical problems

hooter54 said:

I don't know who said it, but i believe it, its better to be lucky than good. Therefore if your both your set

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Short term, maybe so. Luck is a fickle partner, though, skill will out in the long run.

Said it before, I'll say it again. Skill wins ring games, luck wins tournies. How many times this Q gonna be asked?

There is so much luck in poker. online poker has alot of luck to it. How many times have u been playing online and one seat wins no matter what kind of crap he plays. I see that all the time. That's what makes it so aggrevating. It's one thing to lose to a decent hand but, to keep losing to some idiot that plays every hand and wins most of them

i listen to the voice in my head........although sometimes that voice is, mad ,angry, drunk, ect.....lol

Luck wins you tournaments.

Skill puts you in the right place so that Luck can happen.