[innerpeace]

having been active in both the chess tournament circuit and poker (mostly cash game circuit) over the years, i have definitely given thought to this interesting question.

before proceeding, to add to the list, gm walter browne used to play poker quite frequently and if he did poorly in a tournament would complain that it was due to having played poker all night. i may be mistaken, but i believe walter competed in the 50k horse event this year.

getting back to the question. i think it depends on your working definition of skill. it would, in my opinion, be impossible for someone to become a world class chess player without a tremendous amount of study. i.e., no strong chess player can brag about never having read a chess book, but you see many good poker players make these claims.

on the other hand, i think one can potentially accomplish the same in poker with less work. but, i think the reason is that poker requires skills which can't often be explicitly learned, but which one tends to just have or develop, like the ability to read your opponents, or a situation and then play in accordance with your read.

even though the space of possible board positions in chess is quite large, in poker the number of situations is even greater since you have to take your opponents mind set into account. this is why it would be difficult to write a computer program to do well at most forms of poker. the search space would essentially be infinite. (for similar reasons, there are no good programs for the game of go - the search space is too large.)

so, to sum - i think chess requires more acquired skill, but poker requires more innate/intangible skill. anyway, have to get going, otherwise i would post more.

interesting thread, i hope it continues to be active.