Math project skill v. luck |
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Posted Thu Oct 07, 2004 6:41 pm GMT by cooper19
Hey
hs senior here doing a topic of choice math project and i decided on skill v. luck in poker. Anyone have any info or know any sites or articles regarding this subject?
thanks
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Posted Thu Oct 07, 2004 7:41 pm GMT by wEbMaStEr
Hrmmmm this is a tough one, because even if you KNOW you have great odds to call a bet, you still have to be able to read if your opponant has the hand to beat you.
As far as odds v luck, i could send you my handhistory for the last 1000 hands, from that you will see that 23:1 shots happen about 50% of the time 
Don't know any specific sites, but i would look for stuff by David Sklansky, he is the most odds driven poker writer i ever read.
Posted Thu Oct 07, 2004 9:27 pm GMT by Dave B
You can steal this:
Luck=short term
Skill=long term
You are welcome.
Posted Sat Oct 09, 2004 11:53 am GMT by Tex Rex
Dear Cooper:
Here's a thought on how you might proceed. If you could have computer generated hand do something like this:
1. 100 players and have them each receive 10,000 hands. Each hand would be five cards dealt from a 52 card deck.
2. Assign a numerical value to each possible hand (I would think you'd not want to use the almost 2.6 million possible five card hands and give poitns in those kinds of numbers)
Here's what that would show -- That there is very little difference in the average quality of hands each player received. A math major I knew once claimed to have done this project. He said the average hand value (on a scale of 0-100) was 50, but all 100 players scored between 48 and 52 as the average hand value.
He said that would prove that real "luck" thus plays a 4% role in poker.
Everything else is related to skill. If two people play heads up for 10,000 hands, if one is very lucky and the other is equally unlucky, the lucky player will have the better hand 400 times at the max.
Skill involves getting the other players to put more in when you have the better hand, and taking less in losses when you don't have the best hand. That's really the bottom line. Skill involves recognizing good and bad hands early and playing accordingly. It involves knowing when you have a marginal hand that you can stay with cheaply and win when you hit. It involves recognizing the situations where you probably have the best hand, but could be outdrawn, and either getting the other guy to fold, or limiting your loss if you are outdrawn.
Skill involves bluffing, catching others bluffing, and fooling other players into calling or folding in a hand.
Skill involves reading other players. It may also involve simple observation in the game. Example: While playing a hand of five card draw one night, one player (I'll call him Joe) held 2 Aces. He pitched his $ in the pot and went to fix him something to drink. While he was not at the table, the dealer flashed the bottom card to everyone else (accidentally -- only the dealer and Joe didn't see). Another player accidentally dropped his hand -- the top card was an Ace.
I stayed with a pair of Jacks, and drew three cards. Joe finally came back, picked up his cards, then realized he also had a four flush. After thinking for a few seconds, he drew to the Aces. I caught a third Jack. When my Jacks beat his Aces, he said I was just lucky, and that if he's gone with his flush draw, his first card would have been his flush card and he would have won.
Now think it through. If he'd seen the other two Aces, which he had a chance to do just by staying at the table, he would have drawn to the flush since he would have known his Aces were all out. Had he drawn one card behind me, I would have checked instead of betting the maximum, then likely folded on his raise, because I would have suspected a flush or straight draw. His playing his dead Aces was not bad luck. My drawing a third Jack might have a luck element involved, but he too could have improved his hand by making a better draw if he'd stuck around to observe what was happening in a hand he was still active in.
See, I don't really think you could call what happened luck. I can understand not calling it skill, but it's not luck. His leaving the table at a critical time was a voluntary decision he made and he had the same opportunity to have good luck that hand as I did.
I don't advocate cheating, but if cards are flashed by other players or the dealer, looking is not cheating. That's info available to other players. (Aside: I'd also quietly advise a player or dealing they are flashing cards so they will stop.) Not looking is not using available information. Observing takes skill, but that kind of thing is not luck.
The only way it would be a game of luck would be if every player were requred to bet the same amount on every hand. Or, if every time a player won a hand, he got a point, or a certain number of points for a hand (1 for a pair, 2 for two pair, etc. -- something like that). Over the long run doing that, the only difference between winning and losing players would be luck.
But that's not poker. It's barely even related to poker. In other words, when you take the luck element out of poker, you have a great game. If you take the skill out of it, you have something else entirely.
Another piece of evidence to support the skill level is that if you can track some games over time, you will see that the same players are consistent winners.
I have always tracked the games I've played in if it was possible. It's hard to do if you play for actual cash and people buy in for different amounts and take money on and off the table, but I've played in very few of those games.
I'll give you an example of one game where there were five regular players, and frequent guests. Over time, I won slightly over 70% of the time. On the nights I won, I won an average of 2.5x what I lost on the approximately 30% of the games I lost. So, over 10 games, to keep the numbers simple, 3 times I lost $1; 7 times I won $2.5. My 10 game average would be +$14.50. I tracked that for every player (I was the best in that game).
Another indicator (at least in my opinion) is to track the total of money won and lost over time. That game, more than 90% of the money that actually changed hands wound up in my pocket.
One of the other five players was a slight winner, winning 5% of the money. The rest of the money went to guests, some of whom came once and had a good game.
Two of the players won between 45-55% of the time, and both of them were within 5% of being even.
Two players were consistent losers -- each lost about 2/3 of the time, and when they lost, they lost more on losing nights than they won on winning nights.
All of that came from 90+ games played over 2-3 years.
I had a friendly argument with two other players in that game over whether poker was luck or skill. They insisted I was lucky. One of them was a slight winner overall, and one of them was one of the big losers.
Interestingly, I was the ONLY one who believed skill played a significant part in the game.
I'm not sure the records from one game would prove that up all by itself, but from many it would. I've been a consistent winner in every regular game I've played in. I definitely don't think that is luck.
Hope this helps.
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