Poker - the game of both luck AND skill?

Hello CC !

Before I start writing this post, I shall warn you that this thread is going to be full of theoretical opinions and thoughts, so don´t get angry at anybody´s opinion

I was wondering for a long time, if Poker, our lovely game is mostly a game of luck or a game of skill.
I think this is a pretty discussed topic and it would be awesome to not even discuss it, but actually TRY SOME EXPERIMENTS.

I saw a thread where people discussed their opinions and most of them said that Poker is a game of BOTH luck and skill. I agree with this statement, however, it´s not always true. Let me explain myself :

Yesterday, I tried a little experiment playing the "Poker School Open Skill League" freeroll on pokerstars. At the start, there were ~8000 players enrolled.

After winning my first hand with , while receiving a beautiful fullhouse on flop, many of those who called my all-in with WAY better cards, must have felt really bad.
This way, going all in ALL the time, I made it to be the chipleader of the tournament in a few minutes. Other players at my table did not always call my all in, however, most of the time there was at least single player who dared to call me.
About 6-7 hands later from the start, I was sitting at the first place of the chip structure ladder and I had mixed feelings - in the past, while trying my best to tactise and play only the best hands, I always ended up with no chips and out of the payed positions. This time, playing with absolutely 0 skill, just going all in all the time, I was first. I would like to mention this odd thing that happened : I received and went all in again. A player called my all in with . He ended up loosing everything since the cards came as .

After some time I started loosing. I had enough chips to lose some hands and not even notice, but after some time passed there were players who had nearly the same amount of chips, or even more than me. I lost all my money when there were only 4000 out of 8000 players left.


Now, lets analyse this :

Playing about 70 hands, I only got a monster hand maybe 2 or 3 times. EVERY SINGLE TIME when this happened, noone called my all in.

Thinking about it, those players who made more chips than me must have been even more lucky going allin all the times.

What I am trying to say, that the luck/skill ratio depends on whether you are playing a freeroll or a high stake cash game or high buy in tourney.
Players in freerolls tend to call anything, because they have nothing to lose.
We could say that bluffing in these tournaments is irrMY elevant, as everyone calls everything, mostly.



My outcome:
It depends what type of tourney/game you are playing.
While playing freerolls is more about luck, playing high stakes or high buy ins MAY BE more of a skill.




Make your own opinion on whether this game is about luck or skill more, and write your opinions down here, please


I will make sure to update this thread by simply trying my experiments again and again, and in different toruneys.
Today I will play this freeroll again and I will update this thread with my outcome.
Later I will do this in low buy in tournaments, and even higher buy in tournaments and will tell you what did happen to me.
I think that we can definitely say that what I am doing here is just pure about luck.

To me its a game of math. How much of my stack am I willing to risk on a coin flip. Most people think of a coin flip of a pair vs 2 over cards but in reality 2 live cards comes pretty close.

And just like the casino, there are hands with longer odds that pay better. Calling a 3x or 4x raise with small pairs or suited connectors can lead to busting a villain's AA, KK, QQ, ect...

Not a game of luck, but percentages. The skill is staying in the + side of the percentages over the long term.

How can a player affect the flop? Pre-flop play from observation that can also be influenced from prior post flop results either by concrete results or abstract folds with no clear objective about what is faced on why we are folding? The player facing these situations from a reaction perspective, from their own perception of reality in the abstract, this thought will result in the player with a weaker mental state to train themselves to make the wrong decision. The skill full player allows the weaker player, in some cases better players to convince themselves of such thoughts by using psychology of bet sizing, or any tool in the box that allows the opposite to be true as a couple of examples.

By using psychology my thoughts have already set up the reality, the player facing these situations in their mind the unconscious has already affected the hand. Future hands, mentally they only see a clear path by waiting for a good hand? This player will affect their own thoughts, will this transfer to playing a hand sub-optimally by being to straightforward then eliminating any value against the skill full player?

Then luck of getting paid by lesser players may or may not happen because of lesser players playing sub-optimally but looks like skill full play accidentally will then get lucky and suck-out? Getting the better players to give away their value of skill to this affect now is non-existence?

By saying can’t, then none of this can be seen in reality if we think we can only have affect that comes from waiting for concrete moments?

By saying cant, I meant that you cant actually affect what cards will be given on flop, you are not Dalai Lama nor Baba Vanga to manipulate physical objects to your own thoughts I mean, the cards are already stacked in the stack and its just totally random what cards the cashier takes out of the stack and put on the table.

80% luck,20% skill

Obviously you can't affect the flop, but you many times have some influence on what cards you are playing against. A perfect example is how poorly AA plays in a multi way pot. If you want to raise 3x the BB you are going to get calls by about everything. Bigger raises and re-raises narrows the range.

Certainly luck has a large part to do with it. Now, as far as your experiment goes I don't think you can say that it was a fair assessment of luck vs skill since by going all in, you were removing skill from the equation. Another person cannot outplay you as you no longer have any decisions to make and therefore your opponent cannot force you to make a mistake. You just happened to get lucky for a long time. Nor could we say that skill outweighs luck had you lost that first hand as once again, skill was never able to be displayed in that hand.

Having said that, I believe more in the law of probability (as is the basis for all profit made by a casino) then I do luck. Sure, I will get lucky against players and they will also do so against me. Same as what comes on the board I cannot control luck, but I can have an effect on how I and my opponents play a hand. So I rely on skill and hope to get lucky my fair share of the time.

While it's obvious that luck or random chance is always part of the game because you cannot influence what cards are dealt, I once heard it explained that for new and / or casual players poker is mostly about luck. However for the pros it's primarily about their skill.. reading opponents, how they play any given cards in various situations, and so on.

I've also seen the results of a study (sorry, can't find it now) that showed that as the number of hands played passed around 15,000 skill became the primary factor.

To answer a reply with an explanation your post is losing, with such an absurd statement, any person that has a brain knows no one is going to influence the cards that appear on the flop. Having a discussion with questions put in your abstract format would have been proper, instead you have to explain your thoughts means no real thought was done before posting so, by explaining this thread already has no bearing on luck or skill of players responding.

May want to work on your posting skill because it will be luck if anyone can respond seriously when asking this question before the real question; (When somebody says its just about the skill, I say ), your post is miss-leading in its content? Otherwise knowing the first question, then there will be no need for the follow up question or the other category about luck; (when somebody says its just about luck, I say) because now there is no clear objective of this thread?

of course its mostly luck on the short run. if you flip a coin only 10 times,of course it can drop lets say 2 times on a side and 8 times on the other side(even if the chances are 50/50) but if you flip it like 9999999999 times,the result will be close to 50/50

+1

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/ny...ules.html?_r=0

http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/5939-pennsylvania-judge-rules-poker-is-a-game-of-skill

We're back to the same old question, if poker was luck, why do the same good players constantly win?

to get a true read on this you need a lot more input than one game. Play like 100 then post the results I think you will see the luck factor have a lot more issues overall then your single game.

case in point other night 3 am freeroll watched a guy buy rebuy in tune of about 15-25 dollars first place wound up at 48.00 second he woulda came out even anything else hes at a loss overall. Just not a good decision playing any two cards imho

I agree friend, this game like any other requires skill, knowledge and of course luck, often monster hands lose to a weak hand, this is part of the game, of course you have to highlight the courage of those who play with the hand weak, it is often too crazy players.

Hi guys, thanks for replies.
What am I trying to say here, is that you cant just say you are a pro player cuz you are just skilly. Many monster hands lose to weak hands.


However I must remind you that this post is pure theory and Im not saying that its just skill - read the posts above. So I think saying that there is no clear objective to this thread is pretty pathetic, dont you think ?

I think that if this is a debatable question or theory for anyone, then you probably shouldn't play poker honestly. Or maybe just play it for fun, but don't look to invest a lot of time and money in it.

Let's say that skills and a good strategy give you more equity, you want to be in a better position than the villain most of the time, however, luck will always be decisive.

Poker is a game of luck but when she turned away, then comes the time to apply the skill))

100% agreed, thats what I was trying to say with the original post

life consists of coincidences and accidents by 90%, and in poker

Well I would not go into the mathematics of it.

But for most players its SKILL when they win & LUCK when they lose


For me personally its SHEER DUMB LUCK when I win and excellent skill of the RNG to hand me a loss

However... jokes apart, we forget the 3rd aspect .i.e Human Psychology.
Like we can teach a Computer about Skill/Strategy (like in Chess) but the computer does not know Aggression, Fear, Passion, etc.
Similarly... psychology in a game of poker makes even guys having good hands to give up irrespective of the skill they use.

If in there was no luck ,bad players will not come back and play!

Each of the two is required. If anything is missing a lot of loss

I think so, you need both to succeed.