chess or poker

[baronzeus]

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Do you play tournament chess, BaronZeus?

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no, but i did in high school (2 years ago). i had never played chess before my sophomore year in high school and quickly became top chair at my school. pretty much everything came easily to me and i won some state and local tournaments without any study or preparation at all. our team also won the state IIRC. i dont think im good enough to be a "master" but i really have no motivation to try. the money is very little compared to poker and who the hell wants to date a chess player?

however, i agree with the majority here. i could teach someone to be in the top 10% of SH limit much easier than I could teach someone to be good at chess. chess requires a LOT more thought on my part than any game of poker i've played.


it's really not close either, IMO. for someone who's played both games, poker is so simple compared to chess. just compare the complexity of all of holdem to a SINGLE move in chess and you will see how vastly more complex chess is.

[ski]

both games require an equal amount of skill IMO.

Also can you really say there is one BEST poker player or one BEST chess player? Either game is is about keeping many pieces of information in your head at once. The person who can keep the most pieces of information in their head will win in the most in the long run.

It is the same thing as comparing the BEST classical composer to the BEST computer programmer or the BEST philosopher. They are all using many of the same muscles IMO.

Also IMO both games have some element of chance. For example if you make an error your opponent may or may not take advantage of it properly. People of equal skill may be paying attention to different aspects of the game and will take advantage of different errors. If there was no chance in the game chess players could just play eachother once and know who is better (until one of them studies more).

[neverforgetlol]

At least both games require being good at pattern recognition. Say a game of chess vs. a heads up game of poker.

[Atropos]

I think you really have to define what the question is here.

Because "theoretical" it is very hard to say which game is harder. Chess of course has complete information, however it is impossible for the human brain to find the optimal move in every situation. Poker on the other hand has imperfect information, however the number of moves seems more limited to me. Which game is theoretically harder I cant tell, I dont know which form of Poker one should compare to the normal tourney chess, because 1000BB NL Holdem is obviously a harder game in theory than 100BB NL Holdem etc...

"Practically" chess is alot harder though and it is obvious. There are chess schools in russia where the children learn nearly all their lives under competetent teachers. There is much more good literature than in Poker. I think the game has already been explored deeper than Poker as well. In addition the luck factor is very very small in chess. The real fish, who dont care about learning, will stop playing very soon. The rankings are very accurate so you will play against players of similiar skill to yours most of the time and in big tourneys against players who are alot better.

[aggie]

Asking whether poker or chess requires more skill is similar to asking the same question about poker and baseball. Neither can be answered because they both require completely different skill sets.

[TylerD]

Someone tell me who samoleus played for damit.

[Niwa]

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Someone tell me who samoleus played for damit.

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[kitaristi0]

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I'm surprised there was never a 2+2 chess tourney, I'm sure there's alot of posters who play. I think curtains used to be a GM or something if I'm remembering right.

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I think he was (or still is) an IM.

[ArturiusX]

How about we get back to basics; chess has potenitally thousands of different moves at any one time, all with game changing notions.

Poker is a lot more limited in the options available.

[Max Buyin]

I hate to chime in late but I got to do it. Chess is just plain different from Poker. Poker has alot of facets to work with that aren't available in chess. As far as gameplay is concerned, they are totally different. However, the thought processes in chess and poker can be alike. You determine your best option given all the possibilities. But, and here is the key thing, chess is not a game of incomplete information...just incomplete thinking. In poker, you may only get a lock hand that cannot be defeated every so often, and even then it may not be enough to make your end worthwhile. Chess is about achiving that lock state on the board and not allowing a stalemate, from controlling space, pieces, and even how many tempos ahead you may be on your opponent. You gather up all these things to bring the game to an end, a lock in your favor. It doesn't take long to figure out that in chess, nothing is ever really close. You may think a game was close because you evenly exchanged off pieces, but this is never so. If your opponent didn't completely think it out in chess, on many levels, all the time, more than you, then they should come to incorrect conclusions and lose. In poker you may very well go through the same thought process, be ahead, and still lose. Now for those of you who talk about computer simulation and chess, computers are forced to calculate heuristics to make a move. Time is their only enemy and will lead to incomplete calculation eventually (granted, computers get faster, processing goes up, game gets harder to beat). All chess players have on computers is the ability to not waste their time plotting the bogus scenarios that a computer must to arrive at the correct conclusion. Poker software, intricate as it may be, is playing a game of incomplete information, and with primary knowledge on how it may make its choices via math or memory, you have a decided edge against such software.

Flame me if you think I'm wrong.