How My Son's Insight May Have Saved Poker

[Sherman]

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The "non-people" side of poker isn't exactly rudimentary stuff. Anyone worth his salt can do some simple division to decide if he should fold his flush draw or not, sure. But analyzing patterns (I don't know, maybe you consider that "people"), calculating optimal bet amounts, and even doing regular pot odds against hand ranges isn't exactly simple stuff (even if there was no personal component). People wouldn't all basically do it optimally. To the extent that no two players are identically skilled at the people aspect, they're also not identically skilled at the math aspect.

But what you're saying is really just semantics. At least it seems so to me. Maybe two players aren't ever "exactly" the same, but that just depends on how you define it. If you had all of the world's poker results ever, surely you could find two players that for the most part proved themselves to be equally skilled. One might still be nano-tenths of a fraction better statistically, but so what? You can say that about anything that requires any reasonable skill.

The "people" aspect doesn't really make a difference. What's important is that poker is a complicated game that not everybody can play well. I agree with you about that.

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No matter how you define it though, no two people will ever have the same skills. Thus, in the long run (infinite trials) any two players playing heads-up one will come out the winner. This is critical to demonstrating that poker is a game of skill, and not of luck (though there certainly is a luck component involved).

I think we are in agreement, but not really sure. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]