How My Son's Insight May Have Saved Poker

[David Sklansky]

The title is possibly a touch exaggerated but maybe not. You see there is a big debate going on in several venues, internet and otherwise, regarding how much "skill" there is in the game of poker. And the answer to that question may be very relevant to whether the game will become legal in various places. The details of that are off this subject. What this post is about is simply the subject of "skill"
and the conversation I just had with my son Mat, about it.

Few people claim that poker is all luck. Even though in most forms of the game you can't make any decisions that will alter the strength of the cards you hold. However most of the legal arguments that I have encountered (and occasionally have been asked to rebut on the witness stand) merely claim that the skill factor is quite small. That luck predominates. And in most if not all venues, that claim, if correct, would be sufficient to win their case and outlaw poker.

I have always declined to testify, because I realized that the statistical evidence I could give, regarding hourly rates and standard deviations of winning poker players, might backfire. Because of what it says about the length of time required before a pro could be almost sure of being ahead of a decent amateur.

On the other hand that is not really fair. Sure luck predominates in the short run in poker. But that doesn't prove there isn't a lot of skill in the game. It only proves that there isn't much DIFFERENCE in skill between excellent, and merely competant, players. But how does one prove that to a jury? That the luck factor is accentuated because average players are in fact pretty skillful themselves. And right off the top of his head, Mat gave me the answer.

Which is that ONLY IN GAMES OF SKILL CAN A PLAYER GUARANTEE THAT HE WILL QUICKLY LOSE. If for some strange reason he wanted to. Why didn't I think of that? Because of course it is true. You can't guarantee that you will lose in slot machines or keno or roulette or craps just by playing badly.(I'm not counting the artificial plays of betting red and black or pass and don't pass at the same time. Nor am I talking about folding every hand in poker. I'm talking about playing very badly.) Only in games of skill, does horrible play mean a quick demise. (Although there are exceptions such as sports betting).

Thus while you can't show a jury that expert play quickly results in a win, you can show them that in poker the opposite type of play quickly results in a loss. Which should be sufficient evidence to prove that skill is a major part of the game.

Though I would love to name this argument after me, the fact is that Mat thought of it and merely gave me premission to post it for him. Thus it must be named after him. The Sklansky Poker Skill Argument.

[pvn]

[ QUOTE ]
Thus it must be named after him. The Sklansky Poker Skill Argument.

[/ QUOTE ]

I heard there was this new hotshot phyicsist hamed Biff Hawking. He just unified Gravity with the other forces. Steven Hawking immediately swooped in to his aid and demanded that this new unified theory be called The Hawking Unified Theory.

Whaddaguy!

[thehotspur]

How does this show that poker is more skill than luck? Surely if a game were even 10% skill one could guarantee losing quickly by playing badly. You have to compare like with like in analogies with other gambling games. Yes you can go all in preflop with 27o and lose quicker than at a fixed smaller stake fruit machine, but you can also bet everything on 13 at roulette.

Establishing that egregiously bad strategic play at a game is apt to make you lose quickly does not logically establish that fantastically good play guarantees success. It is like a fallacy of conditional logic.

Any lawyer worth his salt would counter that you guarantee a similar outcome playing a coin toss game. An idiot could play with the strategy of betting all his money on a throw and doing double or quits each time he won. The certainty of a quick loss due to this bad strategy hardly means that betting on coin tosses is predominantly a game of skill.

So not only does the argument not establish that poker is predominantly a game of skill, or substantially a game of skill, it hardly says anything at all about the skill element as it is *actually* played by the average person who plays it.

And on that last point, since the average player is longterm breakeven then against other average players their success is predominantly determined by the luck of the cards in any session. It might be possible for a Phil Ivey to bring his unusual skill to bear to get better results, but an expert dice thrower (defintely not Ivey!) could bring their unusual skill to bear to get better dice throwing results. But that doesn't alter the reality that for most people throwing dice is predominantly a game of chance. For most, that is average , poker players poker is predominantly a game of chance too. It's just that most players willfully ignore that reality.

[pvn]

[ QUOTE ]
Establishing that egregiously bad strategic play at a game is apt to make you lose quickly does not logically establish that fantastically good play guarantees success. It is like a fallacy of conditional logic.

[/ QUOTE ]

But establishing that fantastically good play guarantees success isn't DS's goal. His goal is to demonstrate that poker is a game of skill. Those are not the same thing.

DUCY?

[Skallagrim]

So your point is if everybody is of equal skill luck will predominate, thus poker is more chance. Who says you get to posit that everybody is of equal skill? If everybody on 2 baseball teams were of exactly equal skill, then luck would determine the winner there too. So baseball is also a game of chance. And every other skill game....

[pvn]

[ QUOTE ]
So your point is if everybody is of equal skill luck will predominate, thus poker is more chance. Who says you get to posit that everybody is of equal skill? If everybody on 2 baseball teams were of exactly equal skill, then luck would determine the winner there too. So baseball is also a game of chance. And every other skill game....

[/ QUOTE ]

That's certainly not *my* point. Playing skillfully doesn't guarantee anything even in games of skill, because it says nothing about how skillfully your opponent plays.

[Sherman]

I still don't get what this debate is about. To me it is very simple. If in the outcome of the game over many many trials there is variability in individual outcomes, there must be a skill component. If there is zero variability in outcomes (or near zero) skill is not a component.

In poker, there is clearly long-term individual variability in outcomes (winnings), thus it must be a game of skill. If it were a game of luck, (e.g. roulette) there would be zero (or very near zero) variability among individuals in outcomes (winnings).

Case closed.

R. Sherman
Ph. D. Student Personality/Social Psychology

[Sherman]

As an aside, it seems that two factors can be used to measure the "luckiness" of any game.
1) The amount of variability among individual outcomes (over infinite trials), with greater variability meaning more skill involved in the game.

2) The length of time (number of trials) for an individual's average outcome to apporximately equal his or her average outcome over infinite trials with more trials meaning greater luck involved in the game.

Any thoughts?

R. Sherman
Ph. D. Student Personality/Social Psychology

[thehotspur]

[ QUOTE ]
In poker, there is clearly long-term individual variability in outcomes (winnings), thus it must be a game of skill. If it were a game of luck, (e.g. roulette) there would be zero (or very near zero) variability among individuals in outcomes (winnings).
Case closed.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sherman, the answer is not categorical. Poker is both skill and luck, the question is how much skill versus how much luck. Merely demonstrating that skill exists in the game is unhelpful, we all know that there is skill in the game. For the rest of us that doesn't mean case closed. The challenge is to prove that the game is predominantly skill over luck.

Skillful players are prone to good luck as well as bad players too. For every skillful player you can point to who has amassed good money how many equally skillful players went broke.

[SuperPokerJedi]

Mat for Senator!