Poker is harder?

[Dave2020]

Boondoggle,

It seems to me you have just been replying to the posts you feel are easiest to reply to. I disagree with your "just adjust your game" attitude and would like you to respond to Rotating Rabbit's post. I think his tennis analogy here is great!


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There is no doubt the game is getting harder to win. As the losers get better, the winners win less. This process continues until everyone is a loser to the rake. Sure, we're not there yet, but its coming closer every day.

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[img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] This thinking just makes me laugh, no offense.

I mean we see all these threads about "poker is about skill," "poker is about skill", "poker is about skill" and yet the underlying idea to posts like the one above is, "poker is becoming less about skill."

There are all kinds of reasons why this thinking is totally wrong. As Sklansky has written, you make money by playing well and exploiting others' mistakes. And as you yourself get better, (in theory) you can move up in stakes, making more money in absolute terms.

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Before you 'laugh' think about it because you're not getting it.

Its a closed system. Consider the simplest case where there are two players. Player A is better than player B.

Money won by A = money lost by B - rake

Now, all learning curves are concave. Thus, in time, if both players play together, the difference in skill between them will narrow. Player A may always be better than B, but the difference will be less pronounced as time goes on. An analogy: consider you're an expert tennis player and you start playing a beginner. Obviously you cane him. Over time if you play enough, he will get better quickly, but you won't improve much. You may beat him every day for ever, but you'll win less easily as time goes on.

This is important because while your relative skill difference decreases, the rake does not. Thus there will come a point when the loser has improved enough such that the winner does not beat the rake. Ie they both lose to the rake. In a world where all players are equal, all players lose.

The only way to avoid this eventuality is if enough newcomers to the system are introduced on an ongoing basis. The exact craeteria for this is hard to calculate.

What I have said above is NOT (as you say) mutally exclusive with the point that 'skill is important'. Skill IS important, but the above is still true.

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