Luck Vs Skill In Poker

One of the longest running debates surrounding poker is whether or not the game is one of skill or one of pure luck. Indeed, even the American government argue that poker is pure gambling whilst others classify poker as a mind sport.

So is poker a game of skill or is it governed by luck? The actually answer is both, which probably does not help but let me explain.

If you take a look at the leaderboards for online Texas Holdem tournaments and cash games it is always the same players who are there. When you look at players such as Daniel Negreanu and Phil Ivey, why are they the two most profitable tournament players of all time? Are they simply luckier than everyone else? Surely not.

The thing is that poker is a game that, in the long term, is a game of total skill but is massively effected in the short-term by the luck of the draw, so to speak. Poker is unique in that the very worst player in the world can take on the best and beat him on any given day but if the two opposites play for long enough the good player will take all the weak player’s money. Compare this to a game such as football where you would expect a team like Manchester United to beat Yeovil Town every single time they played, without fail.

Behind all the attempts to read players, making bluffs and everything, poker is a game base don mathematics, mostly odds and probabilities of cards arriving on the next street or not. This is why poker, in the short term, is a game of luck because you have a set chance a card you need will come or not. But in the long term, as the mathematics converge to the norm, or what you would expect, skill starts to be the dominant force in play.

One of the reasons those who play poker online often say they are better players than those who only play live is because the online players will often have played more hands in a single year than their live counterparts will have done in their entire lifetimes. This means that the online players are less likely to be winning due to variance and more to the fact they are beating the game which cannot always be said of the live players as they simply will not have played enough hands or tournaments to be able to truly say they are winning due to skill.

Tags: debate, game, Phil Ivey, player, poker, skillShare