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Skill and Luck or Skill and Chance?
Certainly Poker is primarily a game of skill. But rather than it being a game of luck, isn't it better that it's seen as a game of chance?
Skill and Luck or Skill and Chance? It seems to be a "half empty, half full" type of question where the answer might depend upon how positive you are.
Comments
However, in my opinion 'skill' is only one of those three words that can be used to explain long-term results. The luck & chance even out over many thousands of hands, leaving skill alone to account for gains or losses.
Luck is just the word fish use that actually means variance.
But players do tend to moan more about "luck" than "chance". And when they moan long term it becomes evident perhaps they should be focusing on "skill" rather than either of the other two .
Variance is more about odds over a long period of time.
Luck is about something that is random.
I think I am with Dohhh on this one !
Variance is also a word used by average poker players to justify a lack of skill.
variance is about odds and percentages that is best measured over a long period of time.
great responses.
i was proposing two things.
the most successful players are those who are most skillful
there is a correlation between the least successful players and those players who talk of luck.
....just my opinion of course
Over 1 million hands I would expect any significant skill advantage to certainly be evident.
If it were just down to luck then the tournament player who has defied odds of 500/1 on 50 occasions has achieved odds 25,000/1 and the number of individual hands he has won through luck would be astronomical. Luck affects all players but it's the skill factor that separates them into winners and losers.
I've won a few tournaments in my time but at the moment I can't win a hand......... does that make me lucky or unlucky?
The odds of defying 500/1 on 50 occasions are much larger than 25,000/1 which, in fact, would be the odds of doing it twice (approximately).
I don't do maths but the principle stands just the same.
But hold on a minute ........ each game is individually 500/1 (499/1) and are seperate not cumulative. Isn't this the same as buying 2 lottery tickets as opposed to one, your chances of hitting all 6 numbers remain the same ........... Or am I having a senior moment?
In the theory of an infinite universe (which I believe you are partial to) it is a fact that there will be someone (in fact an infinite number of people) who will lose 1 million coin flips in a row. This, indeed, would be "bad luck" or "negative variance" if you prefer to use the pseudo-scientific terminology that some poker players like to give to this sort of thing.
The odds of winning the lottery if you buy two tickets for the same week is half that of winning if you buy one lottery ticket (assuming that you don't buy two tickets with the same number). The odds of winning the lottery twice if buying a ticket for two successive weeks is obtained by multiplying the odds of each event together. To do it 50 times in a row you would have to multiply the odds of all 50 events together - that would be a very large number.
Poker is a game of chance as per the courts (i also don't really get the distinction here between luck and chance?? they are used to mean the same thing in the context of casino or gambling games like this)
Is it a good thing that poker is a game of chance? Yes because otherwise you would have to pay taxes on your winnings.
Is there skill in the game? Of course but you can't neutralise the luck and therefore it has more chance involved in the game than most decent players are giving credit for here.
The skills involved are deception and reading - disguise your hand, find his / her range - anything else is the luck of the draw so to speak.
And Variance is Luck / Chance - The amount of times you are outdrawn or outdraw to win a hand when the odds are in your favour or theirs so call it what you will but lets not all pretend that this game can be won on skill alone. If it could then you would see Ivey and Daniel, Hellmuth and various other faces lining the main event final table every year and internet qualifiers would not get a look in. But in this game of great variance / chance / luck there is hope for all and not just the Gods of the game
I do take issue regarding the lottery tickets though. I spent some time working with Camelot when the lottery was initiated (I was a consultant re. the lottery tickets and how to produce them) and during that time I spoke to a senior Camelot person who had worked on the outline theory of the lottery. He was most adamant that no matter how many tickets you bought in any given week the odds of winning remained unchanged. In other words at odds of say 14 million to one the odds remain the same whether you buy one, one hundred, or 14 million. Each ticket is equal in chance and cannot be 'halved' because you buy two. If you buy every combination of numbers only one will win the jackpot and the rest will lose. Therefore the odds are unchanged. I don't mean to argue overly on this point, I am only repeating what I was told ..... I still have difficulty with it, but I believe it.
If I buy one ticket there are 13,999,999 other combinations that can win. If I buy two tickets there are still 13,999,999 combinations against each ticket. The best that could be argued is that the odds have reduced to 2 chances in 14,000,000. That doesn't halve the odds surely. If it did then buying 4 tickets would reduce it by the same amount and after a small number of further tickets I would be at evens to win. That doesn't compute.
We have now gone totally off subject
When you play the game the skill comes from knowing which hands to play and from what position,when to bet and when to fold.You find out who you can outplay and who has the advantage over you.
On the table screen there are buttons that define the type of player that you are and whether you rely on your skill or just luck. The raise/bet/fold buttons are used by the more skillful players whereas overuse of the call button is a player who is relying on being lucky.
Luck only comes to the forefront when the hand goes to showdown and you see who has the best hand but your skill factor should determine which hands you let get this far
In the short term any player is capable of getting the better of any other player but in the long term superior skill will come through and win.
So in my opinion it is a game of skill when you look at it in the long term and not just over one session or one week.But unfortunately most of us are unable to view it long term and only see short term profits or losses to judge our own game.
The poker gods have no say in the pots we win without showing our cards.
Of course there is skill, you get good and bad players but each can stand and leave the table on the turn of a card even if 96% in front.
I'm not claiming there is no skill in poker, i like it because it's one of the few ways to gamble where you can actually influence the outcome irrelevant of your holding. But the open isn't won by the same guy every night, week, month or even more than once a year very often. And when it is i doubt you could track through the hand history and say they got there without luck playing it's part
The game is a wonderful combination of both - Enjoy it for what it is
I fear that we are talking at cross purposes - or your colleague was talking tosh!
Buying two tickets (with different sets of numbers) on the same week does, indeed, halve your odds of winning (and buying four would quarter them).
The odds of each individual ticket winning do not change but your overall odds change.
The logical conclusion from this is that, if you bought a ticket with every single combination of numbers, then you would be guaranteed to "win the lottery". :-0)))
If you want to pursue this further, please PM me as I appear to have hijacked another thread.