8 ms·
Is poker a game of chance or skill?
- tptacek 16y agoShort summary, for anyone who already knows the basics of poker: yes, the cards are random, but everyone's bets are a function of their statistical competance and their ability to make inferences from other people's bets, and therefore poker is a game of skill. It's a fine article but it appears to contain very little new insight.
- ThomPete 16y agoWouldn't that mean that it is a game both of skill and of luck?
- tptacek 16y agoIn much the same sense as stock market investing is "luck": randomness is present, but you're provided extensive tools to mitigate its impact.
- ThomPete 16y agoSo it's both luck and skills.
- tptacek 16y agoYes, just like baseball, gymnastics, golf, skeet shooting, and jet travel.
- ThomPete 16y agoHardly a proper comparison.
- tptacek 16y agoPerhaps! But at least it's something we can attempt to discuss. As opposed to whether or not "luck" is a component in something, which is just a message-board dork argument.
- ThomPete 16y agoYou seemed to be the one who made the grand statement about it being a game of skills. How is me saying that it's both skills and luck a message-board dork argument? Pray tell. The point is that there are games that are not luck. Such as chess or go then there are games that are pure luck such as drinking games with highest card drink.
- tptacek 16y agoSince everybody already knows that games exist on a continuum from solvability to coin-flip randomness, you haven't contributed any insight to the discussion, but you're very intent on demonstrating to us all that you know that the continuum exists, and that at least 2 games you can name exist on the far end of that spectrum.
- skinnymuch 16y agoIs there anything that isn't? Sure poker has more luck than other things, but to just boil it down to simply saying 'luck and skill' seems wrong.
- ThomPete 16y agoChess
- tptacek 16y agoHey, message board geek? (And, I'm calling you that because it takes one to know one.) We know there are things that have little to no luck involved in them, and things that have a lot of luck in them. Yes: there is more "skill" (let's not have the message board geek argument about what that word means) in chess. Exactly what is the point you're trying to make?
- ThomPete 16y agoThat your conclusion is wrong. The correct conclusion would be that Poker is a game of both luck and skill. I fail to see why that is by any metrics message board geeky but fair enough if that is what it is then by all means...
- tptacek 16y agoI'm sorry. I've mishandled this. What I should have said to begin with is, "Yes, ThomPete, you are right, and I was wrong. Poker is a game of both skill and luck. Thank you for clarifying that for all of us; it would have been terrible indeed to let stand the incorrect notion that luck was not a factor in poker."
- ThomPete 16y agoI see your point
- ErrantX 16y agoIn a wider sense yes. But to a set of skilled poker players the value of the cards are relatively immaterial; they will play the averages and the other players. One of my friends (a hardened player) once put it like this: The cards are simply there to settle those times when players call bluffs to the end
- Natsu 16y agoI think the better question is how much of each? 50/50 is a lot different than 70/30, but I wonder if there's any good way to measure it? After all, like so many games, the random variation can mask the effects of skill and you can only measure your skill relative to that of your opponents (so a good player against newbies might destroy them, while a superb player against good ones might only get a little ahead).
- rubinelli 16y agoThere isn't a simple, definite answer to this question because the skill of the players affect how much luck determines the outcome. Unskilled players are much more likely to bluff, call bluffs with weak hands, and over or underestimate their hands. In a low stakes, beginners game, there's enough variability that one player with a little more skill won't have much of an advantage. In a professional tournament, the best players show up in the top spots time and again.
- mistermann 16y agoExactly...the new internet based players are, generally speaking, very loose players, and have really change the game in the non internet world. And I'd reckon that a very large percentage of entrants into physical tournaments now are internet trained players, and if you have a large enough % of these people starting, and all (hyperbole) of them "swinging for the fences", a lot of them are going to get through just on luck, but different ones each time. Whereas, you will generally see at least one or two of the top 20-30 "old school" people at the final table of any major tournament.
- gte910h 16y agoIt's actually both. A game of chance is one is which outcomes are mostly/strongly based on...chance. A game of skill is one in which skill is an influencer on the results. Poker is both.
- Apreche 16y agoThis article is correct, mathematically, from what I can tell. However, the author seems to not understand the meaning of skill. Apparently to the author a skilled player is one who knows and plays all the odds correctly whereas an unskilled player plays randomly, or sub-optimally. If all players are equally knowledgeable of all the probabilities involved, then the game is a game of luck. A true game of skill is one in which there is no luck factor. No matter the relative skills of the players, the most skilled player will win. For example, boxing is a game of skill. Poker is not. Two grand masters of poker playing against each other, the result will be determined by the cards. They might as well play Candy Land instead.
- tansey 16y agoI agree that the paper makes some naive assumptions. However, you seem to be equating poker to chess, which is a common but erroneous analogy. Poker is a MUCH tougher game (dozens of orders of magnitude, depending on the variant) than chess. We have no idea how close to optimal any human is at the game. Similarly, computer opponents can only play well in very limited settings like heads-up, fixed-limit Hold'em, where the game tree is a reasonable size. Also, it depends on the period of time that you're looking at. If two people play a single hand, it's almost entirely luck. However, as the paper argues (though again in a simplistic way), as the number of iterations increases, the CLT comes into play and skill wins out. This is true, even for "grand masters" in poker. Tom Dwan has an open challenge to play him in 50,000 hands online. If his opponent is ahead after 50,000 hands, he will pay them an additional $1M. He's not doing this because he loves to gamble. He's doing it because he knows 50K hands are a sufficient sample size to significantly reduce the luck factor. Do you think a game like backgammon is also luck?
- wake_up_sticky 16y agoImagining games to have a "skill component" and a "luck component" is the wrong way to conceptualize games which involve randomness. A much better way conceptualize these games is to consider how many "units" (games, matches, hands, tournaments, whatever) must be played before the distribution of players by (score/place/points) becomes indistinguishable from that expected based on the players' ability levels. For instance, if a GM rated 2800 plays a GM rated 2700, he may lose. In fact, he may lose several games in a row. However, if the two play a 30-game match, the probability that the 2700-rated player will win is very low. Now, if you take the best heads up no limit hold em player in the world and have him play a series of hands against the hundredth-best heads up no limit hold em player in the world, he may very well lose the first hand. He may very well be down after the first thousand hands. But if they play, say, 1,000,000 hands, the probability that the weaker player will be up on the stronger player is as low as, if not lower than, the probability that the 2700 will beat the 2800 in their match. It's not about "skill" versus "luck"--the question is simply, "How many (hands/games/matches/etc.) must be played before the probability that the weaker player (has won/is ahead/etc.) becomes sufficiently small?