Can you win a tournament without any skill?

[NicoSalazar7]

Self if experience, I remember in my early win tournaments 300 people or so and managed to finish first, because that tells me that luck can be on the side of the more novice

 

[BogdanStark]

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.

Absolutely true

Unfortunately, question was about ONLY LUCK without experience.
wsop can't win any LUCKY guy who first time sit at the poker table.
EPT can't win the same guy.

So, maybe any MTT at pokerstars can't win lucky beginners ?

 

[Poker Orifice]

Definitely possible. I have seen plenty of rooks run deep with little knowledge

this ^ is fact!

more common in a micro tourney of Freeroll (obviously) but there's been some really bad players who played TERRIBLY and have final tabled the Sunday Million.

I'm surprised that sooooo many members in this thread think it is impossible to win a tournament with very little skill & all luck. Of course it's possible (not as likely (obviously) but definitely possible!)

The very first day I played online poker, I entered a micro tournament on FTP (& didn't even know it was a tournament when I entered it... I didn't even know how to check out the lobby on the site... had no idea if it was on cash game, Sng, or Tournament).

My first game, "I want to check this out" so I deposit a couple hundred & then play in the first $1 thing I see. I'm entered... what is it? (it was 'The Ferguson' on FTP with approx. 1,000 entrants).

Over 5hrs. later and now its 3:30am
About the extent of my 'skill' or 'strategy' was knowing what hand beats what hand... & of course PLAY ALOT OF hands (CALL alot! & LIMP even more!), & be sure to bluff like crazy & make HERO CALLS (but without even knowing it... til' someone (or the entire table) comments on it in the chatbox)

I got '2nd' of approx. 1,000 entrants. AND that was the first time I played online poker. Trust me... I didn't do this on skill (I watched that tourney play out via a HandHistory Replayer tool a few yrs. later and it was ALOT of fun to watch, lol)

 

[Poker Orifice]

Absolutely true


So, maybe any MTT at PokerStars can't win lucky beginners ?

wrong

Of course they can! It's freak'n poker... not chess.
If poker were like chess, I would always win. You would never win. You would probably stop playing & I'd have nobody left to play against.

 

[Romario2223]

of course yes. It's unrealy win mtt only with lucky

 

[Chipsteal_jj]

When I was a little fishy at poker I came 2nd out of 2000 people in a freeroll so I guess yes.

 

[rickroll]

In large field mtts the fields are so deep that players are often forced to make decisions they wouldn't otherwise make in a cash game. Thus cash games are much more skill dependent and mtts aren't.

There are multiple situations in an MTT where you'll get multiple players shoving with marginal hands - often times you'll see someone wake up with a premium there and quadruple up from medium stack to chip leader. Simply put, in a cash game if multiple people shove preflop you can be confident at least 1 or 2 have AA or KK if not both whereas you'll often see AJ vs TT vs KQs vs 57 all in preflop in a tournament. This also leads a lot of people to overplay hands like AQ because very often you get called with lesser but every once in a while you run into a premium and bust.

The real skill is surviving long enough to put yourself in a position to then get to the crazy part of the tourney where it's really about hoping you wake up with a hand when others are desperate and/or sucking out/hitting your coin flip.

You can't win a large field mtt without having a lot of things go right along the way.

This is why most professionals stick to ring games or short field sngs with occasional mtt play. MTT play is a lot more gambling and a lot less poker, great way to turn $5 into $10k but that's 0.1% of the time, 0.9% $1k, 4% $500, 5% 150, 10% $20 and 80% of the time it's nothing. It's much more like playing powerball than playing poker. You need to play well to set yourself up for good spots late in the game but need those good spots to happen or you won't stand a chance.

 

[PUNISHERR]

I'm going to say you can't beat 700-800 people with ONLY Luck. I mean are you saying just shove every hand?

That said, I don't think you can WIN (1st) without SOME luck. Poker takes both. Your skill will in crease how far you get and how often you cash by a bunch though.
I think that it is impossible to win the tournament without the skills, if luck is on his side, but this is not possible

 

[BogdanStark]

Maybe I will change my opinion (I thought that it is impossible). WHY?
CAUSE yesterday I see STUPID aggressive fishes got into the final table at private MTT and won NICE money...really...they closed an incredible combination...
What can it be except LUCK...unreal LUCK

 

[ScottieDuncan]

Yes, it is possible to win by luck, but, not very often.

 

[Speedbruce]

It will happen sometimes. There are some people out there in the world that just have luck by their side. You see a lot of them at the freerolls.

 

[MASURON2KE]

ofc you will need luck to win tourney
wining crucial pot at right time with shit hands vs monster hands

 

[Jguar]

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






....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.

just the fact that you assume that I and the other 3 people "haven't played enough poker" shows that you base your facts on assumptions. therefor I am inclined to think you are obviously for one, exaggerating the absolute max out of the first situation you stated. do you know the mathematics you are talking about? for her to shove and call a shove every hand for 50 hands straight and win every time? that is like you rolling a dice 50 times, against multiple people, and you picking the right number 50 times in a row.
Get real.
You simply just negated every comment you made so I am going to show it no merit.
As for your second statement. Don't even get me started. I will make three comments on that statement.
1. momomo freeroll.....
2. you play regularly in tournaments that take 6 hrs to reach top 20 for 10$ price pool and yet you are boasting your experience over others
3. first smart thing you said "mathematically impossible" but you negated the intelligence of the statement by saying "seems" prior to, and by saying happens again and again and again, subsequently.
....don't bother trying to start a debate/argument please. I won't bite into it.

You see, in poker people like to make up these amazing and "CRAZY" stories...but man I gotta say, you just won a gold star for the crazy story award.

I can't believe how many people are here saying that you can win a tournament on luck alone. are you serious? you believe someone could sit down for their first time at a poker table with no previous skill and win a mtt?

If you say yes I really believe you need to re access the way you approach the game. In the case of people saying you can win simply by luck, I feel as though that is almost for self comfort. As tho you can sit back anytime you lose a tournament and say, oh well, the luck didn't roll my way. Or awww man, that guy got lucky.
I hear that way too often in poker. You know you do too, and it annoys the shit outta you. You win a big hand and what do your opponents say? YOU GOT LUCKY OMG OMG WTF WTF SO LUCKY!! YOU SUCK!! YOU HAVE NO SKILL!! JUST LUCK!!!
Come on people. Poker is 80% skill 20% luck. Why do you think pros STAY pros????? That phil ivey quote someone brought up about poker being the only game his sister could beat him in was a JOKE. Maybe in a single hand if she got EXTREMELY lucky. But could she win a MTT vs phily ivey or any other pro? where there are hundreds if not thousands of hands played?
where bankroll management comes into play.
where knowing when to bluff comes into play.
where knowing when to call a bluff comes into play.
where knowing if your opponent is outa position comes into play.
where knowing if YOU are outa position comes into play.
ETC
ETC
ETC
ETC
ETC
ETC
come on guys, leave your magical wonder land.

 

[MoeJurphy]

In theory yes but remember we can also play 5 MTT's making the right move every single hand and still not even min cash.
All MTT cashes need a bit of 'luck' you could be unlucky and bust with AA first hand of all MTT's.

We play a high number of MTT's to balance variance in hopes that our edge on the game will give us the bigger cash to make a profit over the early busts.

 

[PUNISHERR]

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.

 

[dobatibata]

luck is 80%
20% goes to "skill" but there is no such skill or whatever, to beat lucky player
So yeah, you can win whole tour. if lucky karma is with you.

 

[stevenright]

To win constantly there's no way to do it without skill, but i guess one out of a thousand times someone bad plays he could get very lucky.
If he knows a little bit about what the good hands are, he will get to the top eventually.

 

[shebandowan]

Winning without skill

I know it is possible at lower stakes tables at least. I see players with little or no skill going all in with virtually any hand and occasionally handing out bad beats. This though is far from the norm.

 

[Manfromltu]

Lucky

of course yes. It's unrealy win mtt only with lucky

 

[edc1]

im not sure you can win without any skill-but im very sure you cant win without a little luck on the way-even if it just means some of your better hands are holding up post flop

 

[BogdanStark]

im not sure you can win without any skill-but im very sure you cant win without a little luck on the way-even if it just means some of your better hands are holding up post flop

Be sure, I saw this Sh*1*t, when NO SKILL fish get into the final table and make more money then you. I was very upset cause this guy who was bitten was me((((

 

[TossUpKing]

as the saying goes.... "every dog has his day"

 

[rory2222]

sure

my GF won some €€€ in 888 freerolls, massive field with over 10.000ppl, she made stack first calling with any hit on flop (bottom pairs, inside draws etc..). With stack 30k on 5k average and my advice + luck on her side (she catch 4 bluffs for life where i told her to fold) she won 200€.

 

[taban13]

Maybe in allin shootout.

 

[BogdanStark]

my GF won some €€€ in 888 freerolls, massive field with over 10.000ppl, she made stack first calling with any hit on flop (bottom pairs, inside draws etc..). With stack 30k on 5k average and my advice + luck on her side (she catch 4 bluffs for life where i told her to fold) she won 200€.

Take my congratulation for you and your GF )))
Real happy in family)
So I've never won such 888 freerolls cause of GF with out any knowledge of poker gaming who pushed and closed any card and any combination))))