[tptacek]

Short 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.

[gte910h]

It'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.

[ThomPete]

Wouldn't that mean that it is a game both of skill and of luck?

[Natsu]

I 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]

There 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]

Exactly...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.

[tptacek]

In much the same sense as stock market investing is "luck": randomness is present, but you're provided extensive tools to mitigate its impact.

[ThomPete]

So it's both luck and skills.

[tptacek]

Yes, just like baseball, gymnastics, golf, skeet shooting, and jet travel.

[ThomPete]

Hardly a proper comparison.

[tptacek]

Perhaps! 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.

[skinnymuch]

Is 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]

Chess

[tptacek]

Hey, 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?

[ErrantX]

In 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