\"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

"Poker is 90% luck"

what's your reply to that?

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

"That is not true."

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

my 10% goes 160 mph

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

I agree. I have much better outcomes when my mojo is working and the stars are aligned in my favor. Forget are that book learning strategy crap. Just find a good two-headed doctor to to cast a spell on your opponents.

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

[ QUOTE ]
"Poker is 90% luck"

what's your reply to that?

[/ QUOTE ]

So how much did you lose?

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

i meant what do you say to convince people that poker is 99% skill in the long run?

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

I think it's closer to 84.653% luck.

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

I always give the coin flip analogy;

I say that we are flipping a coin and when it lands heads we get 52 cents and when it lands tails they get 48 cents. Therefore, the series of coin tosses is random but people understand that in the long run the tosses are the same but we win more money when the toss favors us.

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

Same thing. Why do you want to convince them otherwise. Just smile and take their money. Let them believe its luck.

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

pktour,

You can't assign percentages to luck or skill. It's arbitrary. To someone who says "it's 90% luck" or "it's 99% skill", I just say, "you don't know what the hell you're talking about."

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

[ QUOTE ]
"Poker is 90% luck"

what's your reply to that?

[/ QUOTE ]

Luck evens out. Skill accumulates.

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

Poker is 100% luck.
Except when I win.
Then it's all skill, baby :-)

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

[ QUOTE ]
... poker is 99% skill...

[/ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Poker is 90% luck

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know which of these statements are farther from the truth.

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

In one hand of poker, it far more than 90% luck--22 beats AA about 20% of the time. In 500,000 hands it is far less than 90%. Almost anyone should be able to see that skill leads to a long term edge. The good player sees favorable situations and bets/raises/calls, and he folds the unfavorable situtations. The poor player puts money in the pot too often in unfavorable situations and fails to take full advantage of favorable situations.

In the coin flipping analogy, the good player wins 51% of the flips. Whether he wins the next flip is just dumb luck. In fact it is luck that determins if he makes a profit on the next 10 or 100 flips. When the number of flips gets to 10,000 or 100,000 the player with the small (per hand) advantage is almost certain to win.

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

My wife says the same thing. Annoys me to death. I tell her she's lucky she gets a shopping allowance each month.

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

[ QUOTE ]
Why do you want to convince them otherwise. Just smile and take their money. Let them believe its luck.

[/ QUOTE ]

The problem is that legislators who believe this use it to justify their attempts to ban it. See other thread.

I think it's in our best interests to educate people (players and non-players alike) on this point. Most intelligent people can easily understand that there are elements of both skill and luck involved. Consider the heads-up tournament that was televised on NBC - does anybody really believe that they might as well have just drawn straws?

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

Ask Senator Goodlatte to risk an arbitrary amount of money playing Phil Ivey heads up. It's all luck right? [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

baseball at the mlb level is highly luck dependant.
In a sense nobody says barry bonds sux because he makes an out 65 percent of the time.
Pujols has 0 for 15 slumps.

I think baseball is a great comparison in some sense.

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

YOU CANT WIN IF YOU DONT GET THE CARDS

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

I assume you're trying to convince someone who doesn't play that there's more skill involved than luck. Well, good luck with that; it's not going to happen. The more you try to convince people that there's a skill element and not just pure gambling, the more you will sound like a degenerate addicted [censored]. Don't even try.

If you must, however, your best bet is not to get into detail (again this will make you sound hopeless to them), but instead just use the casino analogy. Ask them why casinos make [censored] loads of money every year. After all, the casino is wagering money as well. After they explain why casinos make money, tell them poker is a game of changing odds and the skill is to wager when the odds are in your favor (like a casino game), and not to wager when the odds are in your opponents favor. Since the odds constantly change, everyone has the same opportunities over time and those who wager favorably, win (don't get into things like outplaying opponents or other technical elements). After that doesn't work tell them, "It's okay to be addicted to gambling as long as you're not addicted to losing."

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

You can kind of quantify it by looking at your "Sharpe Ratio", which is your WR/SD. Obviously this quantity depends on the time frame you're looking at. Let's say at LHE my WR = 1.5 bb/100 and sd = 17 bb/100, then my SR is 0.09, and over 100 hands LHE is 8% skill and 92% luck (for me). Of course this depends on a particular definition of luck.

Over 10,000 hands, my WR and SD are 150 and 170 bb/10,000, respectively, so we could say over this period poker is 47% skill and 53% luck.

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

[ QUOTE ]
baseball at the mlb level is highly luck dependant.
In a sense nobody says barry bonds sux because he makes an out 65 percent of the time.
Pujols has 0 for 15 slumps.

I think baseball is a great comparison in some sense.

[/ QUOTE ]

As a baseball player i have to agree. it's by nature a very streaky game. i've always thought baseball was somewhat analagous to poker, in that luck plays a factor to an extent in the short-run

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

Why is that people's brains malfunction when you have a game mixed w/ skill and luck? Some people just don't want to consider that it's a combo and only understand games of pure skill and pure luck (e.g., chess and fair coin flips).

Skill takes precedent in the long run; erratic luck fluctations in the short run. Making good decisions in the short-term lead to +EV long-term results the closer you go to infinity in terms of hands dealt (assuming you are generally stronger than the competition, etc.). Yada yada yada yada yada yada....

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

poker is more like 75% skill and 25% luck. if someone has 0 skill it would mean they go allin preflop every hand. with someone doing that, you would have give or take a 75% equity edge against the player assuming you are well skilled. its when players of equal skill start playing against each other than poker becomes a game of luck. a player of 0 skill level is a 75% underdog to a player of infinite skill level with a 25% luck factor whereas 2 players of equal skill level have a 0% advantage and are playing with a 100% luck element.

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

[ QUOTE ]
"Poker is 90% luck"

what's your reply to that?

[/ QUOTE ]

Meaningless imprecise statement. Suggests that the person who uttered this statement is weak in quantitative reasoning.

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

[ QUOTE ]
"Poker is 90% luck"

what's your reply to that?

[/ QUOTE ]

i used the following analogy to my brother's gfs folks.

imagine two players, the best in the world and the worst player in the world.

they play one hand. what % of the results from this match is luck? probably like 60/40 or something.

now they play 100 hands. then 1000, then 100000 etc.

eventually the limit of the ratio of Luck/Skill goes to 0 as the # of hands played in this setup goes to infinity.

so "poker is 90% luck" isn't a specific enough statement to really respond to other than to explain the example above.

in the long run, poker is skill. in the short run, it's large portion of luck.

another determinant of the "amt of luck" in poker is your own personal sharpe ratio (ratio of expectation divided by your standard deviation). as that ratio increases, the "amt of luck" in the short term decreases to some minimum non zero value.

Barron

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
"Poker is 90% luck"

what's your reply to that?

[/ QUOTE ]

i used the following analogy to my brother's gfs folks.

imagine two players, the best in the world and the worst player in the world.

they play one hand. what % of the results from this match is luck? probably like 60/40 or something.

now they play 100 hands. then 1000, then 100000 etc.

eventually the limit of the ratio of Luck/Skill goes to 0 as the # of hands played in this setup goes to infinity.

so "poker is 90% luck" isn't a specific enough statement to really respond to other than to explain the example above.

in the long run, poker is skill. in the short run, it's large portion of luck.

another determinant of the "amt of luck" in poker is your own personal sharpe ratio (ratio of expectation divided by your standard deviation). as that ratio increases, the "amt of luck" in the short term decreases to some minimum non zero value.

Barron

[/ QUOTE ]

i heard a better analogy on here once

poker is like a game of chess for $1. except after the game, you flip a coin for $100. at the end of the day, whether you win or lose is dependent on the coin flip.

at the end of your life, whether you win or lose is dependent on your chess skill.

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

[ QUOTE ]
"Poker is 90% luck"

what's your reply to that?

[/ QUOTE ]



"You got that right."

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

[ QUOTE ]
"Poker is 90% luck"

what's your reply to that?

[/ QUOTE ]

I reply "Add the word tournament to that statement and i will agree".

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
"Poker is 90% luck"

what's your reply to that?

[/ QUOTE ]

I reply "Add the word tournament to that statement and i will agree".

[/ QUOTE ]

The person interviewing you then shoots you in the face and pisses on your remains. How do you respond?

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

I come back as a zombie to hunt him down and to reveil his opponents his hole cards.

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

Those in the "skill" camp are just kidding themselves. Poker is all luck.

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

[ QUOTE ]
"Poker is 90% luck"

what's your reply to that?

[/ QUOTE ]

I guess all the casinos in Vegas are "lucky" that their customers don't go on a huge winning streak and clean them out.

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
"Poker is 90% luck"

what's your reply to that?

[/ QUOTE ]

I guess all the casinos in Vegas are "lucky" that their customers don't go on a huge winning streak and clean them out.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, but math and stats are for donkeys.

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

Dinkin' Flicka.

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

"90% of all sayings in quotes are false"

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

Does it really matter if it's luck or skills if you have $ at the end of the day?

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

yes because you might not have any money at the end of the next day

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

I always thought about it like this. The more skill you have the less luck is a factor.

Do you think the game is 90% luck for a player like Ivey or Greenstein.

Luck is a factor for some more than others.

Re: \"Poker is a game of chance\"
 

Tell them about Andy Beals billion dollar bankroll. Nobody can get that lucky!