How My Son's Insight May Have Saved Poker

[Emperor]

Umm... so when do you start testifying?

[sadlaws]

I'm not sure if that has already been said, but I would compare poker to money investment.

It's like to gamble on the stock exchange... why isn't that forbidden ? Is THAT a game of skill ?

Poker is same as money investment... on short term anyone can win, but those who make the best statistical moves will win on long term.

It's all about statistics. You can play your cards so that you will statistically win more then you loose.

I know everyone here knows that already, but I think the analogy is good for someone who doesn't understand that the luck factor doesn't count on long term... just like good investors will win on the long term.

Do I make sense or not !?

[roy_miami]

Blackjack has 2 positions, one is skill based and one isn't. The player (skill based) can lose every hand if he so chooses. The dealer (non-skill based) has no control over whether he wins or loses.

[StregaChess]

[ QUOTE ]



game of complete information vs game of incomplete information

[/ QUOTE ]

That’s a total over simplification of the issue. Chess is the holy grail of proving that machine can conquer man. The “programmers” have had at it with focused resources and funding for half century. Even still machines play “World Class” but to say a machine is ultimately better is still an over simplification. There is open debate if a program could beat the world’s best correspondence player. Deep Blue VS Karparov is not a black and white story. Developers modified the program between games, a huge advantage and some would consider cheating. Kasparov was promised in return access to the game logs, they promised and never delivered and other strange things occurred. There is a documentary that chronicles the whole scandalous event.

Bottom line given enough resources and time Poker would take a significant hit too. And that’s from a legit point perspective. Programs colluding with the knowledge of each others cards could do some serious damage.

Hold on to that complete vs incomplete as long as you can...

[rutang]

[ QUOTE ]
rutang misunderstands the argument, his statement "and whether or not I fold a hand is determined somewhere around 95% of the time by the cards I'm dealt. so, in a given hand, luck is more than an 80% determiner if I even have a chance to play..." is a testament to his skill, not chance - HE determines which hands to fold, the cards do not REQUIRE it.

[/ QUOTE ]

that would be true if you are trying to figure out whether or not skill is used in every hand, not whether or not skill has a greater than 50% impact on the results. This is somewhat difficult to discuss without a clear definition of how you legally analyze skill and luck. The fact is, that in a single hand of poker, just like in a single at bat in baseball, luck has a much more significant role than skill in determining the outcome. But when you analyze a player's performance over a longer stretch of time, you'll see that profitable player's skill will impact thier results much more than luck, in the long run.

And at the end of the year, Ichiro and Todd Helton will be closer to .400 than 99% of the field. Just like my VPIP, thier decision when and how to swing happens on every pitch, but luck still dominates a single at-bat.

[Skallagrim]

I understand where you are coming from rutang, and I agree with you. As a poker player, especially one who plays with the anticipation of actually winning money over the long term, that is the best way to approach the situation. I try and play that way.

In the legal standard we are talking about, however, the goal of saving poker (in most but not all states) is achieved when it can be said that the random distribution of the cards CONTROLS less than half the outcome(s). So while of course it is smart ("Skill") to throw away most hands, NO RULE REQUIRES IT. And sometimes you can bluff out an opponent with bad cards, sometimes you will play bad cards just to "mix it up." SO IT DOESNT DETERMINE THE OUTCOME. HOW YOU CHOOSE TO PLAY THOSE CARDS (SKILL) DETERMINES THE OUTCOME (even if the skill of throwing away 2,4 os after two pre-flop raises is pretty obvious).

In fact, what is happening is you, through the exercise of your brain, are LETTING the cards decide for you - which of course you dont do all the time, and for which you have a pretty good idea that that STRATEGY will work for you in the long run.

So who controls ULTIMATELY, the cards or you?

[E.Z.]

i agree skallagrim..

any aggressive Pro could sit down at a full ring NL game (small stakes $50) and simply play position and make reads without looking at his cards.

just bluffing and betting the pot on the flop and firing through when scared cards hit. he would win money more than half the these short sessions all the while seldom (if ever) going to a showdown.

last year a guy wrote how he played in a WSOP event at the same table as gavin smith. he said everyone was so afraid of gavin early in the tourney that he took down 9 str8 pots with pre-flop raises.

gavin would be very lucky to have the best starting hand out of 10 players more than 2 or 3 times in those hands. but the lucky suckers that had better hands folded..... i wonder why?? they had the best chance to win?

[ozziepat]

One issue with the skill argument is that skill in NLE, for example, is relative - even, maybe especially, over the long run. That only stops being true at the very highest levels of the game and players. Joe Blow can suck in one set of circumstances and excel in another. Is he skilled? Obviously not if it is some absolute factor in his play.

Blackjack is a game of knowledge (given sufficiently frequent shuffles). Best play is governed by known odds. You know them or you don't. Bad basis for "skill" argument.

So, what is "skill" anyway? Can you measure it? Not by winnings, for most players. Perhaps the most that can be said for consistent winners is that they are better at picking their contest conditions, an option not available in most contests, which again is a knowledge exercise.

[ElyJon]

Poker is not a game of chance at all. Casino games are a game of chance because the only legitimate way you are going to win is totally by chance. Poker I would argue is a totally different beast, not even a casino game. I believe that it is possible, although not very intuitive to say, that laws concerning casino licensing, and anti-gambling simply do not apply to poker. And it is not because poker is a game of skill, although the fact that poker can be beat by skill is part of the argument that defines what poker is. It is because poker is a non-casino game, not a game of chance at all.
To understand what poker is, you must first understand what a casino is, what exactly it is that a casino is in the business of doing. What is it that makes a casino a casino, what an illegal casino is doing that basically makes it illegal and what a legal licensed casino is licensed to do.
A licensed casino is in the business of taking bets from players on various games that are run by the casino, were the rules of the game are the rules of the casino. A player in a casino is betting against the casino. The games licensed are licensed so that a casino establishment can provide a game a player can bet against, A casino is licensed to provide games were the casino has an interest in the outcome. The games the casino provides are typically and openly in the casinos favor. The games are designed so that chance is the only factor that determines the outcome of the game. When such games are played they are illegal or licensed.
The definition in law of what an illegal gambling device is clearly includes any device like a slot machine, roulette wheel, craps table or about anything that a licensed casino would use to spread a game were a player wagers against the casino. To define anything else as an illegal gambling device is to err, and unfortunately this error is a common one in law enforcement, legislation and in the common perception.
The key difference with poker, is that it is not a game were the casino has an interest in the outcome of the game. This is a key point, because the whole thing that defines rather are not a game is illegal or subject to licensing is if there is some sort of establishment (business, person or persons) operating a game of chance were the establishments is a participant with an interest in the outcome of the game.
A really good question is are you operating a game of chance if you do not have an interest in the outcome of the game? Casinos clearly do not have an interest in the outcome of a poker game. The players clearly have an interest in the outcome of the game, however they really do not fit the definition of casino operators by sitting down and playing the game, since they do not provide the game as any kind of establishment. You could say that the players are the casino in the sense that they are who the player is playing against and they are the ones with an interest in the game. However, the simple fact about poker is that it is a zero sum game and therefore there is no real interest built into the game. So the players really do not have an interest that can be had in the game, making it impossible for them to be classified as a casino that spreads games were the casino has an interest in the game. The establishment that has the game cannot be classified as a casino because it clearly has no interest in the outcome of the game and is not making or accepting wagers.
You cannot make up numbers about rather are not poker is a game of skill that are expressed in fractions. Poker is a zero sum game. It is not possible to operate a poker game as a casino game and have potential winners or losers. The house would have no edge and the player would have no edge. In the short term rather or not any party participating in the game would be ahead or behind is totally unpredictable and the amount in the long run anyone was losing or winning would be a minuscule fraction of the total amount placed into action. Chance as a factor in poker is a total of zero, it cannot be proved any other way. In real terms poker is not a game of chance. It is a Boolean value that only relates to chance. Yes/No, True/False, Is/Not. Poker is zero sum, and zero always returns a value of No, False or not. There is no maybe value if it is zero summed.
This is the crux of poker! What makes a game a game of poker is that all the players of the game have absolutely no edge over the other players in the game. There is no inherent edge in the game, any edge that a player might have is totally inherent to the player and not at all a part of the game.
If you buy my argument here, you have to conclude logically that if there is no inherent edge in the game of poker, there is no inherent win or lose, that there is no interest possible, therefore poker is not a game of chance. If you conclude that poker is not a game of chance, your only choice left is that the only factor that can be proved to be a factor is the skill of the player.
So now we settled that (even if you did not buy it just pretend you did for the sake of argument), we still do not have as much as apples and oranges, we have something more like navels and Valencia’s or green apples and red apples. Poker to the unskilled player is still a gambling game. When you add in the rake, tokes and overhead of playing the zero sum game the only shot the majority of players have is the same shot they have at the slots or casino tables. We as a society have already decided that protecting the stupid from themselves is a very good spin point to suppress the liberties of the masses, and poker certainly has all these negative spin points (degenerate gambling, broken families, its money for milk… ad nauseam). Therefore what I wonder is what exactly is the point in proving that the game is a game of skill?

[Lottery Larry]

[ QUOTE ]
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.

[/ QUOTE ]

That would be the "Mat S PSA", thank you.