Can you win a tournament without any skill?

[detroitjunkie]

5% luck and 95% skill

This is way to generous!!!!!!!!! More like luck= 35% and skill 65%. You need luck in a number of ways
1a - get good cards 1b- have them hold up
2 - others to not get super stacks from luck before you
3 - to not be at a table with the best players in tourny
4 - to be seated properly against certain stacks
etc...
1 is obviously the most important and is a big chuck of the equation - WAY more than 5% - otherwise almost no amateurs would win
Also consider the number of players with equal skill - which will be about 75% of the field - how do you navigate that - luck alone is the answer

 

[Zin]

Even the so called best players in the world need luck to win. But yes anyone can win a tournament.

 

[sergey ptz]

even if won without the skills then really be disappointed in poker, maybe permanently unable to carry, and no knowledge !!!

 

[baxre]

Win big tournament without skill is quite impossible ....

 

[BentleyBoy]

On the basis that poker is a game of skill and luck then the chances are there that a player could win a tournament based purely on luck....however the poker luck gods would seriously have to be in your favour. While the probability is very small, you could for example get AA every hand and the flop land AA7 every hand, and if it goes all the way the turn and river could be 3 and Q (for example, which means no other hands could beat you. This would be pure luck and would defeat any skillful play on the part of the other players, even if they tried to bluff you. However the chances are so slim it must be pretty difficult, but still possible.

 

[DavidUAH]

No

No, you cannot win a tournament by being lucky but skills are not enough either. You need both skills and luck to win.

 

[BPEPFPDP]

Win some MTT without skill? In my opinion it's truely almost impossible, You gotta be lucky, you need premium hands like `bullets` every time and a looot luck. If you decide to play like `bingo playa` forget about some winnings, i mean you lost in most cases...

 

[Jguar]

lol i say no, just no. how can you win with no skill unless you're playing against all other players who have no skill or experience. Just doesn't make sense dude....

I could see a mathematician winning a poker tourney if it was say his first time and he just knew the rules but never played before. But then, wouldn't that be considered skill?

My other question is that his is kind of a catch 22. How can you say someone has no skill if they've won the tournament?
So in order to win a tournament you have some skill. It's not like you have your eyes closed and you're just pressing buttons...
In poker you make decisions. If you make the right decisions, especially enough to win a tournament, then you have skill.......

 

[zingbust]

Some great answers in this thread!! However, some of the more recent answers like these....

Win big tournament without skill is quite impossible ....

No, you cannot win a tournament by being lucky but skills are not enough either. You need both skills and luck to win.

lol i say no, just no. how can you win with no skill unless you're playing against all other players who have no skill or experience. Just doesn't make sense dude....

I could see a mathematician winning a poker tourney if it was say his first time and he just knew the rules but never played before. But then, wouldn't that be considered skill?

My other question is that his is kind of a catch 22. How can you say someone has no skill if they've won the tournament?
So in order to win a tournament you have some skill. It's not like you have your eyes closed and you're just pressing buttons...
In poker you make decisions. If you make the right decisions, especially enough to win a tournament, then you have skill.......

....are only good SOUNDING answers. In reality, these 3 players just haven't played enough poker to have seen the kinds of things most of us have indeed seen.
It is not only possible to win a large field MTT (600 or more players) with pure luck alone, it is actually probable.

Here are some examples of what I've seen.

1) I got moved to a table in a large field MTT. The game was no-limit holdem. I soon began to notice one of the players going all in every hand...(not ALMOST every hand, but EVERY SINGLE HAND). This player not only shoved when it was her turn to act, but she also CALLED other players' shoves (100% of the time). Here's the seemingly impossible part. SHE WON EVERY SINGLE HAND. About 10 of those times she needed a certain card on the rvier ( a 2 outer, 3 outer, sometimes a 9 outer etc) to win and bust the other player and ALL 10 TIMES she caught exactly the card she needed to catch despite the mathematical improbability of doing so).. now here's the ironic part. She DID NOT win the tournament. While heads-up, she had her very first loss out of the last 50 hands or so. This loss came after she shoved with AA, got called by garbage, and the garbage hand sucked out on her. 1 or 2 hands after that she busted in 2nd place. Although she didn't win the tourney, she absolutely demonstrated that it's possible to win with pure luck alone.

2) I have been playing the Mo Mo Mo PLO freerolls of late on the WPN. In every one of them that I play in and make it deep (top 20 remaining out of 500 or so), there is ALWAYS someone on my table who plays EVERY SINGLE HAND, sometimes the player will call, sometimes raise preflop but in 100% of the instances that player will open with any 4 cards and that player will WIN 100% OF THE HANDS and that player will occasionally go all the way to first place, winning the tournament by playing every single hand from start to finish. It seems to me that this is almost a mathematical impossibility, yet I've seen it happen, and the oddest part of it is that it happens OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

So...the conclusive answer is YES, it's possible to win an MTT (even in large field events) with pure luck alone.

 

[SlavaUa]

Yes all you need are luck and concentration.

 

[freestocks]

Yes. Phil Ivey once said this is the only sport I could get beat by my little sister.

 

[underdog140]

Yes, I just witnessed it. $55 buy in ... $2K GNTD .... player was hitting everything. They KO'd me when they called my all in with 5 2 off vs my KQ. Then went on to KO another player with 3 4 clubs .. KO's the next with JJ ... Wins the heads up battle when pushing with 9 3 off and hits two pair.

 

[Mr Alvim]

Do not say that . The Poker considered and 80 % skill and 20 % luck. Very difficult one person to win a tournament without any skill .

 

[kabrouto22]

You cant rely on just being lucky.Its almost certain that you will loose most of the times. You gotta have skills too. So yeah luck+skills will get you somethin out of it.

 

[jigglypuff99]

You cannot win any kind of MTT without luck. Heck, just look at the WSOP Main Event. Joe McKeehen was all-in on about the third or fourth day against Josh Beckley (ironically enough, the guy McKeehen eventually beat for the title) and hit a 10 on the river for a straight. He doesn't hit that, and he's out. He was behind from the getgo (AK vs. AQ) in that hand and was 9% heading into the river. But I am sure that every other player who made the final table (heck, I bet prbably every player who just made the money) has a similar tale of hitting a river card to win a hand.

The real question is not can you win a tourney based purely on luck (the answer would be no), but what is the percentage of luck vs. skill required to win? Look at some of the other hands on that video. McKeehan won a coin flip early when he had AK vs. QQ and rivered an ace. He won another big pot against Zvi Stern when McKeehen had a full house and Stern had nothing but bet into him any way (to me, that's another form of luck).

Is it luck to get AA? No, that's just poker. You play long enough and you'll get it. What is luck is when you get AA and somebody with AQ in front of you shoves all in and you scoop a big pot. That's the luck part.

Here is another example of luck for McKeehen. He gets pocket 6s and calls a pre-flop raise against some guy named Guan with QJ. McKeehen gets a 9-6-4 flop to give him a set. Guan check-raises the flop after McKeehen bets 550,000. Then the turn is another 6 to give McKeehen quads, and Guan bets 2.3 million on the turn! That's another example of luck is when your opponent picks a bad time to bluff against you.

I think the real lucky ones during that mckeehen-stern hand were the fans. watching stern bank and bank every hand was horrible.

 

[detroitjunkie]

Jerry Yang - enough said

 

[daco111]

Skill and perfect timing (when to play) is more then luck.

 

[theevildub]

Jamie Gold did ... you can too !!!

 

[Lubzhen]

Poker is very complex game. So without the experience and knowledge to win tournaments is not possible.

 

[ovidiu9b]

when it comes to freerols i think that luck allways wins beacause a lot of people raise blindly with stupid cards and win over others who calls wits ak for ex...of corse everybody goes all in when they dont have anithing to lose and vs all in the skills means nothing

 

[veronica]

I think the mere fact of winning a tournament is because they have a skill , it is likely that even personna not know or underestimate their own abilities , and so it must not believe that no one possesses .
I think that everyone is different and so it is different every ability of each individual, is what in life makes us unique , so too in poker , so sometimes we see players with different playing same hands then we wonder .. because? or they play the same hands the same way , and likewise the results are different too, it is because each has a unique skill.

 

[daco111]

If anyone wins the tournament then there is skill in it no matter how lucky he was.
No skill is all in tournaments.

 

[slavka_rus]

The tournament should be a success. But to win a tournament newcomer is difficult. Since the tournament game is divided into 3 levels .. 1 level beginners is they fly in the initial stage (some of them goes to the 2nd level). In the 2nd level, of the remaining flies beginners with basic knowledge of poker. At level 3 out experienced players. Those players who are on this forum and played big tournaments could feel all these facets. As a result, in some tournaments you can get into the prizes if the maximum level to play at 1, and the rest only play strong hands. So get in the team can be winners, but to win relying only on luck - unreal

 

[Lubzhen]

I Agree. Each person has their own unique style of play. The same combination of hand and people play differently. So play poker, we need to carefully watch the play of opponents.

 

[erysett]

of course you can win even the tournament, luck is luck

just luck, you can win it
skill without luck, you can bluff as much as you want, if is no any luck there, you get paid and again you get knockout