Sklansky says that NLHE MTTs with no antes have more skill. You?

[Bonified]

Saying that one game "has more skill" than another isn't a well-defined statement. There are at least two facets to this. One, the luck factor, and two, how much edge one player can have over another. Tic-Tac-Toe has no luck factor, but there's no edge either, unless you're playing against a 3 year old. Backgammon has a big luck factor, but the better player can have a very big edge. So which is the "game of skill" ?

I mean there's no doubt that chess or Go (no luck factor [1], big edge) are are more "skill games" than Chinese Poker (huge luck factor, no edge [1] again). But if you're talking about more subtle cases like no limit poker vs limit poker or NL with antes vs NL without, there's almost no point arguing about it. Different skills come into play in each case and usually when someone's arguing for one form or another, they will present the game that matches their own skill-set as being "more skillful". Skalansky's [2] argument here seems to match this pattern.

[1] I'm not interesting in nit-picking the difference between "none" and "little or none" in these cases.

[2] Whenver Brandi mangles the English language, the mangling should become standard on this forum. I think this would be very productful.

[Dunkman]

First, the entire game of poker is centered around going after the dead money in the middle, whether it be blinds, antes, or both. I think we can all agree that if everyone put all their money in PF then there's no skill (well, except the flipament champions, but w/e they cheat.) If there's no money in at the beginning, then we can all also agree that there's no skill (best strategy would be to just wait for the nuts, AA in hold'em.) So, there's some happy medium of money in the middle that makes the game require the most skill. I guess I can see what Sklansky is saying, because effective stacks would be larger with no antes there would be more room to maneuver and play and less incentive to be aggessive PF. I don't think this is nearly enough evidence to say there's more "skill" but it's a valid argument. What this really seems about is what the people who say "he likes to fold I like to pooosh" mean. That is, people who have played a lot of limit poker tend to not fully understand the the PF skill that modern (especially online) players possess, and they think PF is just a mindless exercise in pushbotting whereas postflop is the only place where true skill can be applied. Therefore, since no antes encourage more postflop play, he's concluding that the tourney would have more skill. Like I said I disagree, but I see where he's coming from.

[Double Ice]

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There are at least two facets to this.


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...and two, how much edge one player can have over another.

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this is what i mean by "skill" (as a quantity)

[AaronL]

antes are just a way to hide that the "blinds" are higher... It makes perfect sense that there is more skill involved without antes because the cost of playing a round of poker has gone down... I haven't read the article but I'm assuming this is the jest of it...