Posted Sun Feb 12, 2006 3:13 pm GMT by zinn0
We've all heard the arguments about whether poker is luck or skill. I personally think that over the long run it becomes more skill. What does everyone else think?
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Posted Sun Feb 12, 2006 3:26 pm GMT by kompis
i think short term it is all skill, long term all luck, mid term it is skluck
Posted Sun Feb 12, 2006 3:31 pm GMT by tame_deuces
When luck/unluck may be a major factor:
- Low sample size (ie. few hands). Few hands won't tell you if your losses/winnings is due to luck/unluck.
- Improper bankroll management. If you play NL with a bankroll of 4x the buy-in, its luck when you don't bust.
- When rake reaches sufficiently high levels it is probably safe to assume that even winning players are winning partially due to luck.
When luck/unluck is probably not a major factor:
- Very large sample size (ie. many hands). I don't have any real knowledge of statistics but I've heard opinions stating that you would need 100-200 thousands hands before you can really claim to be a winning player.
- Proper bankroll management. When the bankroll is properly managed you brace yourself for the effects of 'swings', and can rely on skill to win over the long haul.
Apart from that, I would guess that the amount of true winning poker players is probably relatively small. I know I haven't played enough to know if I'm a winning player or not. I also _believe_ that the majority of 'winning' players are winning due to variance as opposed to skill.
Posted Sun Feb 12, 2006 3:53 pm GMT by xDiamond_CutteRx
Skill is the ability to appear consistently lucky. If Poker were all luck, there would be no Phil Iveys or Gus Hansens or Doyle Brunsons. At some level, the luck fades away and you're left with skill--that isn't to say that luck doesn't play a huge short-term role, or you would see about the same nine guys make almost every final table.
Luck is short-term, but everyone has to get lucky now and then.
Skill is long-term, but it sure helps in the short run, too.
Posted Sun Feb 12, 2006 4:03 pm GMT by Sean_in_NJ
I'm convinced that statistics is the shill in the three-card monty game of life.
Some people are going to win.
Some people are going to lose.
Since, ultimately, all outcomes are predetermined skill/luck don't matter.
And, I'm only half-kidding. 
Posted Sun Feb 12, 2006 4:39 pm GMT by jaf625
I think luck has a huge amount to do with poker. All a "skilled" player can do is try to win the most from situations when luck is on his side, and minimize losses when it isn't. And that's hard enough.
Posted Sun Feb 12, 2006 5:06 pm GMT by Skribbles
| kompis wrote: | | i think short term it is all skill, long term all luck, mid term it is skluck |
I think you got that backwards.
Short term is luck. You can make perfect plays and some donk can always get lucky. If you keep making the right plays over time you will be a winner.
Posted Sun Feb 12, 2006 6:01 pm GMT by suitedaces84
I just wrote something on the subject. It just discusses the basic stats behind all this stuff. I'm headed out for the evening but I'll post it when I return.
Posted Sun Feb 12, 2006 6:15 pm GMT by kompis
nah short term is skill, long term luck.
Posted Sun Feb 12, 2006 6:19 pm GMT by Hungry4Knowledge
If you make the right reads and plays at the right time and place you will be a winning player! Luck will always be a factor, and lucky players can do amazing things.... In my oppinion Chris Moneymaker was the luckiest man alive for a week, and he won millions and a bracelet..... But players like Brunson, Chan, Hellmuth and ivey can outplay him 7 days a week and twice on sunday  Everyone can win pots, not all can earn them!
Posted Sun Feb 12, 2006 7:02 pm GMT by kompis
Posted Sun Feb 12, 2006 7:16 pm GMT by Skribbles
| kompis wrote: | | nah short term is skill, long term luck. |
Can you give a little explanation please and then answer these questions.
When you have a losing session due to bad beats / 2nd best hands is that luck or skill?
If you make a consistent profit over a long term is that skill or luck?
If you are a consistent loser over a long term is that luck or lack of skill?
If you have a session were you get dealt AA or KK every other hand, and they hold up every single time, is that luck or skill?
Posted Sun Feb 12, 2006 7:24 pm GMT by groton
Long Term
Skill(since I feel Money Management plays in with Skill.)
Short Term Luck
Midterm Some luck but mostly skill
Posted Sun Feb 12, 2006 7:26 pm GMT by Jernej Zorec
luck is getting paid off big with good hands
and skill is to loose as little as possible with medium hands
Posted Sun Feb 12, 2006 7:36 pm GMT by snoogins47
I'm finding it very hard to express just how awful this question is, every time it is asked.
But, ignoring the fact that the question is intrinsically gag-worthy, there are a few things that invariably happen to people, that are worth mentioning in this same breath.
1)We all suffer from some form of self-serving bias, in differing degrees. We're sure that our luck is way worse than average, and we're sure that our skill is way higher than average. This combination is deadly.
2)And this is a biggie. Folks, "luck" shows up in a lot of ways, and isn't necessarily a bad thing.
For the first part: Whenever somebody posts a hand where they got all their money in as a favorite, and lost, anybody who's been within eight miles of a poker game will say "don't worry about it, luck, bad beats, short term, variance, donk, bankroll" and all that shit.
But what about when somebody posts a hand where they re-raised all in on a semi bluff, get called by top set, and lose? It's always "reckless" this, "better spots" that, etc. The problem here, of course, is that our opponent doesn't always have top set. He might often have hands he would fold. Luck? I think so. What about when Joe "WPT" Schmoe makes a big re-raise preflop with 26o, but it just so happens his opponent who initially raised has J3o and can't call? Well, regardless of whether or not the re-raise was a good one, Joe Schmoe still got lucky.
Randomness rears its head in an unbelievable amount of forms, and all but the most obvious tend to go completely unnoticed by the majority of players.
The second part of that: Good players get "lucky" too. They have to, just like everybody else. Saying "Raymer got SO LUCKY" to win the WSOP ME is true, but would have been true about ANY player who won the WSOP ME. Who cares?
I could ramble about this for days, and probably will, but right now it's time to go eat.
Posted Sun Feb 12, 2006 10:52 pm GMT by suitedaces84
Standard deviation is the amount off the average something is on average. There are several ways to calculate it. But it’s not worth learning how to calculate because it will take a long time and there are plenty of programs that will do it for you (like poker tracker; just click the sessions tab and go to more detail). The important thing is to know what it means and how to use it.
If I were to flip a coin one hundred times I would expect it to land on heads 50 times. But how likely is it that it will land on heads more than 55 times? How about than more 60 times? What about less than 35 times? The answers to all these questions can be easily be found using the a few basic principles of statistics.
The first is that standard deviation is proportional to the square root of the sample size. This one should be pretty self explanatory.
The second is that the probability of an event occurring decreases as it gets more SDs from the mean. For example an event will occur within one SD of the mean 68% of the time. An event will occur between one and two SDs of the mean only 27% of the time. This means a random event will be more than two SDs away from the mean only 5% of the time. These numbers were found using z-scores.
A z-score is the number of SDs you are from the mean. It can be either positive or negative. The formula for it is:
z-score = (r-m)/SD
(Where r is the result and m is the mean or average.)
If I flip a coin 100 times and get 45 heads my z-score would be negative. If I get heads 60 times my z-score will be positive. There are z-score tables that will allow you to find numbers like the ones I gave earlier. Here is an online z-score table.
Due to another basic rule of statistics the SD of the number of times I’ll get heads when flipping a coin 100 times is 5. This rule does not relate to poker win rates so there’s no need to explain it. This means I’ll get an answer between 45 and 55 68% of the time and a number between 40 and 60 95% of the time. With 95% certainty I can say my answer will be between 40 and 60.
Now let’s apply some of this to poker. If my win rate is 2BB/100 and my SD is 15BB/100 what is my true win rate with 95% certainty after 10,000 hands? Recall that SD is proportional to the square root of sample size. That means my SD/10,000 hand is 150BB. Also recall that 95% of events will fall within 2 SDs of the mean. Since I’m looking for 95% certainty I need to go +/- 2 SDs. Note that I’ve won 200BB over the course of my 10,000 hands. That means the true win rate is per 10,000 hands is 200BB +/- 300BB; my true win rate per 100 hands is 2BB +/- 3BB. This means that even though I’ve played 10,000 and have won a large amount of money there is still a reasonable chance that I’m not really a long term winner. There is also reasonable chance that my true win rate is much greater than 2BB/100.
If I had the same 2BB/100 win rate after 1,000,000 hands my true win rate 2BB/100 +/- 0.3BB (the same math was used here as in the above example). Even after 1,000,000 hands my win rate is still not very accurate.
This should explain why short term results are mostly meaningless. It should also explain why everyone says you should have a bankroll of 300BBs. As you can see here it wouldn’t be that difficult for a very good player to lose 200 or more BBs. Of course it’s okay to sit down at 2/4 with only $800 in your account. Just understand that even if you are playing significantly better than your opponents it will still be very possible for you to lose your $800. Poker contains far too much short term luck for short term results to be meaningful. And when I say short term I don’t mean today. It’s good to keep reevaluating your game; just don’t do it based on some bad short term results.
The amount of skill involved in poker is proportional to the number of hands played. The amount of luck involved is proportional to the square root of the number of hands played. So, the luck to skill ratio is proportional to the inverse of the square root of the number of hands played. As a result the luck to skill ratio will approach zero as the number of hands played approaches infinity.
Posted Mon Feb 13, 2006 7:13 am GMT by tame_deuces
Good post from suited (as usual )
What is interesting here is comparing big tournaments to cashgames, it is doubtful that many people will play enough big live tournaments for any reasonable hand sample. And especially the amount of 'key hands' will should be far less in number from a live tournament specialist to a live cashgame specialist. And an even bigger stretch to an online tournament specialist and probably an enormous jump to an online cashgame specialist.
I'm not saying winning tournaments doesn't take skill. Let me say it like this...if we take an 'unlucky' player who has busted from 5 big live tournaments because he had a bad run in 10 50/50 coinflips.
This could be a bad run for a cashgame player too, but not especially noteworthy. 10 combined AKs that misses&JJ/QQs which hits overcards and having to dump on turn isn't exactly 'strange' for an online limit player who 8-tables.
Basically I don't by the crap about the people winning the WPTs and WSOPs being the world's best poker players...I don't even think they are close. Some of them are without doubt very, very good, and some prove themselves in other arenas of poker. But I think many are very much idolized. And even if they are very good...it is hard to know if its true.
Posted Mon Feb 13, 2006 8:16 am GMT by JohnnyCache
| suitedaces84 wrote: | Standard deviation is the amount off the average something is on average. There are several ways to calculate it. But it’s not worth learning how to calculate because it will take a long time and there are plenty of programs that will do it for you (like poker tracker; just click the sessions tab and go to more detail). The important thing is to know what it means and how to use it.
If I were to flip a coin one hundred times I would expect it to land on heads 50 times. But how likely is it that it will land on heads more than 55 times? How about than more 60 times? What about less than 35 times? The answers to all these questions can be easily be found using the a few basic principles of statistics.
The first is that standard deviation is proportional to the square root of the sample size. This one should be pretty self explanatory.
The second is that the probability of an event occurring decreases as it gets more SDs from the mean. For example an event will occur within one SD of the mean 68% of the time. An event will occur between one and two SDs of the mean only 27% of the time. This means a random event will be more than two SDs away from the mean only 5% of the time. These numbers were found using z-scores.
A z-score is the number of SDs you are from the mean. It can be either positive or negative. The formula for it is:
z-score = (r-m)/SD
(Where r is the result and m is the mean or average.)
If I flip a coin 100 times and get 45 heads my z-score would be negative. If I get heads 60 times my z-score will be positive. There are z-score tables that will allow you to find numbers like the ones I gave earlier. Here is an online z-score table.
Due to another basic rule of statistics the SD of the number of times I’ll get heads when flipping a coin 100 times is 5. This rule does not relate to poker win rates so there’s no need to explain it. This means I’ll get an answer between 45 and 55 68% of the time and a number between 40 and 60 95% of the time. With 95% certainty I can say my answer will be between 40 and 60.
Now let’s apply some of this to poker. If my win rate is 2BB/100 and my SD is 15BB/100 what is my true win rate with 95% certainty after 10,000 hands? Recall that SD is proportional to the square root of sample size. That means my SD/10,000 hand is 150BB. Also recall that 95% of events will fall within 2 SDs of the mean. Since I’m looking for 95% certainty I need to go +/- 2 SDs. Note that I’ve won 200BB over the course of my 10,000 hands. That means the true win rate is per 10,000 hands is 200BB +/- 300BB; my true win rate per 100 hands is 2BB +/- 3BB. This means that even though I’ve played 10,000 and have won a large amount of money there is still a reasonable chance that I’m not really a long term winner. There is also reasonable chance that my true win rate is much greater than 2BB/100.
If I had the same 2BB/100 win rate after 1,000,000 hands my true win rate 2BB/100 +/- 0.3BB (the same math was used here as in the above example). Even after 1,000,000 hands my win rate is still not very accurate.
This should explain why short term results are mostly meaningless. It should also explain why everyone says you should have a bankroll of 300BBs. As you can see here it wouldn’t be that difficult for a very good player to lose 200 or more BBs. Of course it’s okay to sit down at 2/4 with only $800 in your account. Just understand that even if you are playing significantly better than your opponents it will still be very possible for you to lose your $800. Poker contains far too much short term luck for short term results to be meaningful. And when I say short term I don’t mean today. It’s good to keep reevaluating your game; just don’t do it based on some bad short term results.
The amount of skill involved in poker is proportional to the number of hands played. The amount of luck involved is proportional to the square root of the number of hands played. So, the luck to skill ratio is proportional to the inverse of the square root of the number of hands played. As a result the luck to skill ratio will approach zero as the number of hands played approaches infinity. |
Posted Mon Feb 13, 2006 9:22 am GMT by Dave B
Losers claim it is luck, because they cant admit that the suck.
Winners know it is skill, because they understand the game.
Posted Mon Feb 13, 2006 10:43 am GMT by Tralfaz
Actually Dave,
I suck yet I still admit that it is a game of skill. wel of course except when I win then it is usually luck
Posted Mon Feb 13, 2006 1:20 pm GMT by zeroswarm
The fact that players have such huge short term swings suggests that luck plays a huge part in the game.
Players who win big tournaments will have had to have had luck on their side at some stage. It simply isn't possible to win tournaments with big fields without being lucky.
Posted Mon Feb 13, 2006 2:37 pm GMT by TxShadow
| suitedaces84 wrote: |
...
(not quoting the whole thing cause it takes up a lot of space)
|
That is possibly the most understandable explanation of Standard Deviation that I've ever heard/read. 8)
Posted Mon Feb 13, 2006 4:41 pm GMT by Loonbat
Overall, good explanation. You almost nailed it (except for below):
| suitedaces84 wrote: | This means I’ll get an answer between 45 and 55 68% of the time and a number between 40 and 60 95% of the time. With 95% certainty I can say my answer will be between 40 and 60.
|
A confidence interval (in this case 95%) is not meant to say your answer will fall within this range x percent of the time. Based on an "n" value, a standard deviation for the sample, and a sample mean, the confidence interval is used to state the confidence that the true mean (the mean of the population from which the sample was drawn) will fall within this range. So, the bigger the sample, the tighter the range for the population (true) mean. Otherwise, great post.
Sincerely,
-Loon (in his geek mode)
Posted Mon Feb 13, 2006 6:33 pm GMT by Skribbles
| Loonbat wrote: |
-Loon (in his geek mode) |
I was under the assumption you've never been out of geek mode. Interesting.
Posted Mon Feb 13, 2006 11:20 pm GMT by suitedaces84
I think there was some confusion. By answer I meant the result of one specific run. If I was to do this (flip a coin 100 times) 1 billion times write all my results on little pieces of paper, put all the pieces of paper into a hat and draw one at random there is a 95% chance I would draw a piece of paper with 40-60 on it.
You're right, of course; this is not the same as confidence interval.
Posted Sat Feb 18, 2006 4:05 pm GMT by PokerMachine
I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
-Thomas Jefferson
Posted Sat Feb 18, 2006 4:06 pm GMT by PokerMachine
People always call it luck when you've acted more sensibly than they have.
-Anne Tyler
Posted Sat Feb 18, 2006 4:07 pm GMT by PokerMachine
Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Posted Mon Feb 20, 2006 9:18 am GMT by UrAteUp
I have read some pretty lame reasonings here as to if poker is skill or luck. To be honest it is both. It is the skill to create your own luck. Think of it this way:
To keep playing the right hands and knowing when your beat takes skill. To get those hands is luck.
Let me just quote a few leading athorities of poker to highlight my point.
| Quote: | Poker is not a game of luck. It's a game of skill
- David Sklansky
Most people underrate luck in the short run and overrate it in the long run.
In other words, a good player could have a losing week but could never have a
losing year.
- David Sklansky
Positive expectation plays are often accompanied by high standard deviations.
-Mason Malmuth
Skillful players often moan because there's too much luck involved in poker.
They feel it gives those "suckers" too much of a chance. But those players
wouldn't be there if it weren't for this luck factor. Just why would they play
if they knew for sure they'd lose?
- Doyle Brunson
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