[yurisagalov]

That's not exactly correct. Poker is a game of probabilities, which means that it has built in varience, which people call "luck". In a game of poker where two "grand masters of poker" play againt each other in a vacuum (i.e. one tournament, or one hand, or whatever you want), the result may be determined by the cards alone. HOWEVER, as is the nature of varience and probability, given a sufficiently large sample of hands/tournaments/sessions, the better player WILL converge to be a winner. The margin by which he is a winner will be determined by his skill.

Prior to focusing primarily on startups and entrepreneurship, I spent a lot of time playing a lot of online poker. I've put in close to a million hands over a few years at the micro/small stakes, and I've seen bad beats, I've had bad beats, I've put on bad beats, which can all be attributed to "luck", and the swings of the day can be attributed to luck, but over the entire life time of my game, you can certainly see gradual improvement that can be attributed to skill.

When we look at televised tournament poker (not shows like Poker After Dark / High Stakes Poker, where the players need only to have the sufficient buy in and/or be invited to participate), it is not particularly surprising to see the same "grandmasters" (or pros, or whatever oyu want to call them) appear over and over again. Yes, they don't win every tournament, or every hand, or every session, but in the long term, they do win (assuming they don't start playing poorly).

[ThomPete]

Wouldn't that would mean an accumulation of grand masters that would then by an large win all tournaments in the long run. Is that in fact what is happening?

Gus isn't winning every tournament. That might be due to the fact of other better players entering the game. But if your theory is correct wouldn't it mean that the more you play the better you become?

It would seem to me that a game where so much information is hidden from you and that information was randomly distributed luck is a bigger part than skill.

[yurisagalov]

Phil Hellmuth has 11 WSOP bracelets and 75 "in the money" (ITM) finishes

Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan have 10 bracelets as well as 33 and 42 ITM finishes, respectively

Erik Seidel has 8 bracelets and 57 ITM finishes

Phil Ivey has 7 (two of which he got last year, and he final tabled at the main event as well) and 36 ITM finishes.

Daniel Negranau has 4, and 42 ITM finishes

and this is just in the WSOP. I'll leave the WPT tournaments to you to look up :-)

I don't know what's going on with Gus, I don't really follow poker much anymore, but I know he's still a formidable player, even if he's not winning as much as he used to. That being said, Gus isn't someone I'd consider a "grandmaster"

Playing alone does not make you better unless you strive to improve (this, at a high level means, learning. playing != learning in the game of poker. playing is definitely crucial, but you really need to review and study the hands and the players post mortem. This is very similar to chess, imo.)

The younger players coming in (i.e. Tom Dwan) have the stamina and energy to put in _serious_ hours that allow them to improve and adapt much quicker and faster than older players, it's just the nature of the beast.