chess or poker

[punter11235]

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To become a real chess player you need a good teacher (GM if possible) and you must have certain abilities: You must be able to play blindfold, you must be a fast thinker, you must have an excellent memory, you must have a love for the game and last but not least, you must have the killer insinct.

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Hmm from what I remember Fisher couldnt play blindfold and always had pocket chess-set with him but basically I agree with you.
The real diffrence between chess and poker is amount of knowledge in chess (not only opening theory but general strategical/tactical theory). Its exceptionally hard to become good chess player because you have to study for hours to understand things people discovered for 100 years or sth. In poker the situation is that nobody really knows anything about correct strategy . Some people get some things right, some were lucky to have some things right in their natural style and they crush the game. Poker now is like chess were 120 years ago.. Brave players with great heart for fighting and that little "grasp" demolished the opposition just like the best poker players do today.
Its qutie possible that if poker continues to be as popular as today many theoretical minds will take on it and then we will know how difficult a game it really is.

[Shandrax]

You can trust me that Fischer could play blindfold easily. You will not find a single GM nor IM on earth who can't. With Fide Masters it is not guaranteed. There are 6 of them in my team and one of them is unable to visualize the board blindfold. So much for stats.

Besides that people tend to overestimate the tactical genius in chess. You don't have to play like Morphy or Tal to win. Chess can also be played successfully in a rather dry technical way based on a set of positional rules. If you simply make enough "plus-exchanges", you should be able to grind out a win. Needless to say, that's the style I prefer to use myself. My idols are Capablanca, Rubinstein and Botvinnik.

[punter11235]

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You can trust me that Fischer could play blindfold easily

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I am not going to argue that as I dont have enough knowledge. I only remember reading somewhere that Fisher always refused to analyze the position without a chess-set. Playing blindfolded is not a big deal by the way and has nothing to do with being a great player. I played up to 3 boards simultanously blindfolded and I am nowhere near grandmaster level...

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Besides that people tend to overestimate the tactical genius in chess.

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Genius - maybe but tactical understanding is simple one the most important thing in chess. Some players even argue that there is only tactic in modern chess grandmaster chess.

[MrMxyztplk]

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chess is far more difficult imo to be 'very good' at.

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I don't think the skill level of a game should be (entirely) dependent on the time it takes to get good at it. IMO, the fact that someone could pick up poker and become a top level player in 6 months doesn't mean that poker requires less skill, but rather that poker requires more naturally occurring skills.

[DrGonzo]

Okay, I have given this a lot of thought and I think I am ready to settle this debate. The correct answer is "Magic: The gathering".

There are a lot of really good poker players that are only mediocre MTG players, so obviously MTG has the highest level of skill. This thread is dead now and a new one should be started about which requires the most extraordinay amount of geniosity , MTG or pokemon.

[Mickey Brausch]

I know some category A players who can play a decent game of blind chess while playing another game, ie poker or backgammon.

Re tactical genius: Botvinnik said "If Tal makes a sacrifice, accept it. If I make a sacrifice, calculate. If Petrosian makes a sacrifice, refuse it". (In other versions, the last phrase appears as "resign".)

Re Fischer: He was of course perfectly capable to analyze positions in the "blind". When he was sitting around dinner with a bunch of Soviet GMs and they were talking about various positions in various games and what woulda shoulda coulda happened, what were they doing if not blind chess? Fischer simply preferred analysis with a board like everybody else.

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Chess can also be played successfully in a rather dry technical way based on a set of positional rules. If you simply make enough "plus-exchanges", you should be able to grind out a win.

[/ QUOTE ] You mean you discovered the chess formula? You gonn'die. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

Mickey Brausch

[Ben Young]

pokemon is clearly easier than mtg, unless I had some insane innate skill at it, I was near the highest rated player in the world at it and all I did was play a deck my dad designed. even though you're being sarcastic, right?

[Gregg777]

Chess, and it's not even close.

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I am not good at Chess and I doubt I would be good at it because I suspect it might require high innate spatial ability which I score in the bottom.

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Glad to hear this, in the same boat...

[rory]

I am a UCSF expert and I think that chess requires more skill and it is not really close. Think about the myraid of things you consider before you make a move in the middlegame, or the amount of moves ahead you think when you are doing endgame calculations. I used to play correspondence and would spend hours looking at the board before I made one move.

I think if you had three to five minutes to think about each poker decision like you do in a chess game you made it would become fairly clear that chess required more skill.

[rory]

I also disagree with the point that poker somehow requires more emotional control than chess. There is a saying that the hardest game to win is a won game in chess and that is because it is difficult to clamp down on your emotions and not let up throughout the entire game. There is a tendency to relax if you get ahead which is extremely dangerous, especially if the game has been toiling on for four or five hours. Chess is also more mentally taxing because you cannot get up and leave if you are having an off day or you become tired. If you play poker and you realize you are emotional for whatever reason you can get up and go home. When you play chess, you have to fight through your emotion and continue to play well. If you are in a tournament you have to not only play well this game but come back and play well the next game and the next day and so on, or your rating suffers.

The fact that Doyle Brunson can remain very competitive at the highest levels of poker even at an advanced age is evidence that poker requires less skill and effort. The top GMs fall off when they reach their 40s and 50s because their ability to calculate slows down. Look at Bisguier-- he is a GM that a strong master can roll over simply because he does not have the fortitute to play through an entire game at a high level of thought.