chess or poker

[David Nicoson]

What does it mean for a game to "require" skill?

Beyond understanding the rules, a game requires no skill specific level of skill at all. Beating specific players (and I mean this in a long term, +EV sort of way) requires an amount of skill.

So if I rephrase the question, is it easier to beat poker players or chess players? Well, clearly, it depends on which players. Beating me at chess requires less skill than beating Stu Unger at poker, but beating Tiffany Williamson at poker requires less skill than beating Kasparov at chess.

One huge difference between the games is that it is very easy for poker players to overestimate their skill due to the noise of the luck factor. So we see players with vastly different skill levels competing against each other.

[innerpeace]

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It seems clear that, even in high stakes games, there are always going to be players that make significant mistakes, and that although chess grandmasters still make mistakes, they would probably be much fewer and farther between, I would guess (i don't play chess seriously). Since there are more holes to exploit at the highest levels, it would seem that it would take less skill to be successful in the highest games in poker as opposed to at the highest level in chess. What do you think?

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i agree that world-class chess players make fewer mistakes, and the mistakes they do make are usually more subtle and often can only be exploited by other world class-players. however, i think the main reason for the distinction is that poker is an imperfect information game, so it's more likely for even world-class players to make mistakes. (also mistakes in poker are usually more obvious since expected values can be computed directly.) by the same token, their opponents will also make many mistakes.

against world-class poker players you will lose in the long run if you make more mistakes than your opponents (of course, sometimes you may make the wrong decision at the right time and get lucky, but this is a short-term phenomenon).

what makes this issue muddy is that poker includes the luck element whereas chess does not. (this doesn't necessarily mean that poker requires more skill, but that in the short run having skill doesn't mean you are going to win...)

[edge]

I don't know much about chess, and have never played it competitively, but I hear people debating which form of poker requires more skill (probably comes up on the Poker Theory board every month), and invariably they end up with something like five-card stud, because it has the most information available. With chess, there is no hidden information at all. Obviously, this doesn't mean that chess requires more skill Q.E.D. or anything like that, but maybe it's relevant somehow?

[Max Buyin]

Well just consider your options in poker: check, call, fold, or raise(how much? this has several scenarios) for each round. Chess generally offers many more moves than poker offers each round. However with chess (and sometimes not unlike poker) the correct move for a situation lies in the moves ahead of which it was made. In chess every small choice adds up. In poker, a move can equal that of a chess move in certain circumstances, but overall I think chess requires more skill because every move is critical and not without consequence. In poker, small mistakes also add up yet they fail to show the consequences of a small mistake in chess. For example, if you c-bet because it was checked to you, and you find yourself reraised, it is a small mistake and folding won't really hurt you. In chess, a small mistake can have lasting effects and may be capitalized on the whole game. A good example is if you let your D pawn go, and I capitalize on that by controlling that whole file for the rest of the game. In general I think that more moves == more consequences, and more consequences == requires more skill. The best to say that, in general, poker CAN have the same complexity of chess, but seldom is it as steadily complex as chess. Thus, it requires more skill to be good at chess.

[mosta]

complete amateur Andy Beal studies poker in his spare time for a year and becomes close, possibly equal, to the top professionals in heads up limit hold em. (although I can't prove it and may be way off, I think of HU Limit as being towardss the top of the list of pure skill poker).

now imagine him doing that in vs chess grandmasters. virtually inconceivable. even him reaching a 2000 rating candidate master is pretty impossible. now you can argue that chess has two factors: skill and sheer bulk of information. okay, so lets give Andy five years to win a GM tournament (not even the world championship). not going to happen.

I wish we could agree on equivalent levels between the games. eg, online 30-60 limit HE, or 5-10 NLHE = say candidate-master level chess. or, simpler, world champion of poker = world champion of chess. if we established that, the bet I would hypothetically make is that a randomly picked person starting with zero knowledge of either game is several times more likely to be able to reach some set level in poker than the "equivalent" in chess. like at least 3 to 5 times more likely.

on a side note, there sure are a lot of high level players around here. I don't think Gazza, the sh limit player who is a known GM I think, has popped up, but what have there been 2 IMs a GM level and a few masters in this thread?

[PokerBot123]

I think it is clear that poker has more skill, but i'm also sure that the best at chess are more skilled then the best at poker [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img].

The reason for this is that noone plays anywhere near perfect poker. There is no need and doing so would not have the same significant effect that it has in chess, because of the high luck factor on sort term events. Obviously the two games require different skill sets. I think memory is a lot more important in chess.

For those who said chess takes a lifetime to master, there is a 15 year old norwegian boy that has been a grandmaster for some time allready. Most people rate him among the top 15 in the world.

[Megenoita]

No one plays anywhere near perfect chess. You guys should stop arguing that.

[Ryendal]

No, there is not any 15 years old guy in the top 15.

No

[edge]

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complete amateur Andy Beal studies poker in his spare time for a year and becomes close, possibly equal, to the top professionals in heads up limit hold em. (although I can't prove it and may be way off, I think of HU Limit as being towardss the top of the list of pure skill poker).

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Here we have the whole endgame/progression of poker thing coming up again. HU limit seems to me like it can be entirely reduced to game theory and statistical analysis, whereas adding more players and more variables (e.g. no-limit) would multiply the complexity very quickly. Since no one has really spent a lot of time doing statistical analyses of HU limit, it would figure that someone who studied that aspect very closely (e.g. Andy Beal) would be able to overcome a large deficit in experience.

Maybe if HU limit was the only poker game in existence and had been for as long as chess, there would exist a perfect strategy according to statistics and game theory. Given that there are a limited, albeit astronomical, number of ways a chess game can end up, there should theoretically exist a perfect strategy for chess (probably always ending in a draw, like tic-tac-toe, or white always winning). If there indeed are perfect strategies for both games, isn't "skill" just a matter of who more closely approaches perfect strategy? In this case, once both HU limit and chess have been mastered, there would be no more skill in either game than in professional tournament-level tic-tac-toe.

[FlyingStart]

Magnus Karlsen (the kid) is ~ top50, but he is competing in the world championship this year with only 16 players. And his Rank is also steadily increasing which means that he is probably better than his current Rank