Will it ever be possible to prove skill?

[MJL]

I hope this isn't just more of the same that has been posted but the more I read about proving poker should have special exceptions because of the skill factor the more I doubt it is provable. I believe, no, I know skill is a major factor but can it be proven?

My friend is an avid pony and sports better. I know nothing about either. He is a terrible poker player and thinks I get lucky. He states he would rather bet at the track or on a game because a "skilled bettor" will win in the long run. I was shocked at the familiarity of the statement. I challenged him. He told me that in sports betting, careful studying of the teams, players weekly and daily situations like injuries, location etc... mixed with an understanding of betting strategies would put him on top most of the time. He said that the real fish were those sports enthusiast who bet on gut instinct, weak information or team loyalty.The advantage, he says, he has on me is he doesn't have to worry about how some one else bets and be concerned if he should fold or not. He makes a wise decision and sticks to it.He also stated that he doesn't have to have the best hand to win. There may be some who were closer to the winning spread but if he is in the right bracket they all win.

I don't know enough about sports betting and I can't say I agree with him but look at the argument. He is saying that "It is mostly skill". If he can lay out a strong case citing the hours of scrutinizing information and following proven winning strategies causes him to win in the long run even with occasional mishaps like refs (which he takes into account) or injuries. By making the right kind of bets etc...how are we to be so different in our explanation of poker being a skill game? It doesn't matter if it is true if sports betting can come up with a similar argument. The lay person just won't be able to see a difference. To them we are all gamblers trying to explain why our bad habits are actually good.

The question I ask is can we explain skill to a person who doesn't have it in a way that is so different a blackjack player, pony bettor or sports bettor couldn't look the same?

[repulse]

Betting on the outcomes of events (horses, sports) is always -EV in a hypothetical perfect information world, where everybody knows everything about every aspect of the event and its competitors. No individual or group would ever propose a bet that was weighted towards the taker.

In practice, for somebody to have a positive expectation betting on such events, they need to know more than those who make the lines... parties which can be assumed to be much, much more knowledgeable than any individual. The average recreational or even "serious" bettor has a lot of ground to overcome to get on even ground with teams of professional statisticians and analysts that offer the bets. With very few exceptions, most bets made on these lines will be -EV, yet the psychological and social aspects of sports and horse betting lead many people to believe otherwise.

Poker, on the other hand, does not contain this type of wager. It is itself a game, and a highly complex and nontrivial game at that. The decisions made in poker are not as simple as "I am being offered X-1 on a Y-1 shot, is X>Y?" as it always is to the event bettor. This difference is the "skill" distinction as it is commonly discussed. The hypothetical perfect information assumption would not be well-defined for poker as the game-theoretical solutions to most poker games are not known.

Basically, an event bettor is an individual competing against teams of professionals setting lines; in order to have an edge, the individual must know more than the professional analysts. A poker player, on the other hand, must only "know more" (play better) than his given opponents (individuals!) in any moment to have an edge.

[frommagio]

[ QUOTE ]
Betting on the outcomes of events (horses, sports) is always -EV in a hypothetical perfect information world, where everybody knows everything about every aspect of the event and its competitors. No individual or group would ever propose a bet that was weighted towards the taker.

...

Poker, on the other hand, does not contain this type of wager ...

... and more of the same drivel ...



[/ QUOTE ]

repulse - You've got this all wrong, and being on this site, you should know better.

Poker, sports betting, and racing are all "skill games" the way we're using the term. In all these games, players compete with one another, and collectively pay a rake to the house. Luck dominates the short-term results, but in the long-term, the minor factor (skill) determines the net winners and the net losers.

Don't try to build up poker by tearing down racing or sports betting - you can't do it, because they're all essentially equivalent in terms of luck/skill. Instead, draw the distinction with games like slots, craps, roulette, the lottery, etc. That's where your argument makes sense.

[repulse]

I think you have a different interpretation of skill than the one I was considering, which is fine. But in what sense are there multiple players competing with each other in sports or racing? Maybe I'm missing something, but it always seemed to me that horse and sports betting was the house/bookie operating a wager with each player individually. Do you mean stuff like fantasy pools? Those would be different and are certainly something where the players would compete directly in terms of their knowledge.

[frommagio]

[ QUOTE ]
I think you have a different interpretation of skill than the one I was considering, which is fine. But in what sense are there multiple players competing with each other in sports or racing? Maybe I'm missing something, but it always seemed to me that horse and sports betting was the house/bookie operating a wager with each player individually. Do you mean stuff like fantasy pools? Those would be different and are certainly something where the players would compete directly in terms of their knowledge.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're missing something. I could tell from your post that you know poker, but don't know racing or sports betting. The financial models are functionally identical.

The bets go into a pot (pool), with a juice (parimutuel percent, rake) extracted, with the better players (handicappers, skilled poker players), consistently making better decisions than the others, and the net is that the skilled player has a +EV. Everybody sees the same opportunities, but the difference lies in how people choose to play (or pass) on them, and that determines the +EV and -EV players. The -EV guys pay the house and the +EV guys. The +EV guys are sufficiently skilled to beat the losers at a percentage rate above the rake.

In the case of sports, note that the lines are set to divide public opinion, thereby guaranteeing that the rake is extracted (typically 10% from the losing side). In racing, the percent is just deducted from the pot. It's always the same - finding places where pot odds offered are satisfactory given your estimate of outcome odds.

Don't fool yourself into thinking that racing and sports betting are just random gambling, and poker is somehow on a higher plane - it's not true. These are all gambling games with enough skill component so that +EV players exist.

[repulse]

Yeah, I was only talking about the "bookie" style sports betting with individual bets on individual lines. I was under the impression that the vast majority of sports betting was of this form. I thought horses were the same way.

I guess there are different types of sports bets than what I had been exposed to. I also hadn't considered the cases where lines are constructed to divide public opinion... do they really still work this way in the global age? I thought those sort of lines would only emerge in small populations with local bookies. Still, these types of things are still just outright wagering propositions, where the players are simply presented with lines and decide whether or not to take them. I think Skallagrim summarized it well in that this sort of thing would be a game of chance involving skill (the skill of picking only the profitable lines) versus a game of skill involving chance. The skill is all external to the gambling itself.

I definitely don't know much about sports or horses. I was only discussing the type of bet I had been exposed to. Sorry for being presumptuous.

[jlkrusty]

frommagio, I tend to agree with you. Trying to distinguish poker from sports betting is IMO a losing cause.

The main problem here is that lay people, juries, judges, and politicians all have preconceived stereotypes about which games are gambling. Intuitively, they just think poker is gambling.

How do we fight this prejudice? Trying to fight the prejudice by attempting to distinguish it from sports betting is not going to break down people's preconceived ideas. Rather, the best approach is to get people thinking about games that they intuitively think are NOT gambling. For example, I think most people would say that paying an entry fee in a golf, baseball, or bridge tournament is not gambling even though there might be prize money at the end. If people agree these activities are not gambling, then we follow up with the question, "Why are these games not gambling?" And that's what we've got to do: get people thinking instead of relying on old stereotypes.

If a person actualy starts thinking about it, we can then start to suggest factors that make games more skill than chance. Hopefully people will see that one of the most predominant factors is that skillful players tend to rise to the the top in games not dominanted by chance. Such a factor is true in golf, baseball, bridge, and poker. Other factors might include the fact that skillful players will win in the long run (even though short term results might not show that); or that very unskilled players in non-skill based games tend to lose very quickly (as per the Sklansky theory).

But again, the main point is to just get people thinking and questioning their traditionally held beliefs.

[Skallagrim]

MJL - the point about poker and skill v. luck is to sepereate it from the other casino games like slots and blackjack. This is very important LEGALLY because of the way most states define gambling, and because the general public will see poker in a different (more favorable) light if they look at it as more like playing golf for money than like playing craps for money.

Sports betting is a whole different ballgame. There is clearly skill in sportsbetting in making the right picks. But there are 2 factors that distinguish sportsbetting from other forms of gaming:

First is that you are still betting against the house to a certain degree, and the house manipulates ITS results by the point spread or odds - you have to be VERY skilled to beat these guys at their own game, but some people claim to do it.

Second, and more important, although there is skill in picking the right bet, there is no skill involved after you make the bet because you are not involved in the game and cannot influence its outcome. If the star QB dies before the game but after you have made your bet, you are stuck.

And this leads to the most important distinction, no one wants the outcome of a sporting event to be influenced by the betting. And, ever since the "blacksox" scandal, people (and team owners) have realized just how much money could be made by throwing events. And where there is money to be made, some people will try to do it. There was a not to long ago scandal involving point shaving in college basketball, as I recall.

So, while I agree that sportsbetting can be a skilled endeavour, maybe even mostly skill, public policy in regards to the integrity of the sport will always be a factor in the legality and/or regulation of sportsbetting where it really isnt a factor in poker or golf (when you are the player of course) slots or blackjack.

Skallagrim

[Thremp]

I'm still baffled by this:

Sports, horses, VP, craps, blackjack are all skill games. How is poker different?

[cpk]

As I commented in another thread, many states simply do not care how much skill is involved. The fact that it uses playing cards and has wagering inherent to the game is enough to classify it as "gambling." Ironically, in my state poker is regulated as gambling, but backgammon does not appear to be. Just shows you how idiotic and arbitrary the law can be.