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.

[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.

[repulse]

I don't think most people would call craps a "skill" game, but this highlights the sort of ambiguity that this widely-assumed "skill classification" presents.

It is difficult to determine a useful definition of "skill" that agrees with the intuition of the common non-gamer. One useful way to look at this problem is to construct simple example games and determine in what ways they are "games of skill".

--GAME 1:
The player pays $1. He is then presented with a single button. He presses the button. The machine then dispenses $1.99 half of the time and dispenses nothing the other half of the time.
(real-life analogs: slot machines)

I don't believe that anybody (or at least anybody free of misconceptions about basic probability) would argue this as a game of skill.

--GAME 2:
The player pays $1. He is then presented with a choice of two buttons. If he presses the blue button, the machine then dispenses $1.95 half of the time and dispenses nothing the other half of the time. If he presses the red button, the machine then dispenses $1.99 half of the time and dispenses nothing the other half of the time.
(real-life analogs: craps, video poker, blackjack with assumed unavoidable house-edge)

Here the player has a decision to make. Indeed, the decision impacts his profits, and the "skilled" player will always select the red button. Is this a game of skill, or not? A player who always selects the red button will outperform an idiot who chooses buttons based on whim. From a game theory perspective, this game reduces to Game 1 since one option is strictly superior to the other.
I would not call Game 2 a game of skill, and I think most would agree. In terms of what I have found the average public perception to be of the term, it is safe to call this a game of no skill or of trivial skill, especially noting that no level of perfect play makes the player's expectation nonnegative.

--GAME 3:
The game is operated by an omniscient being. The player pays $1. The player is then presented with a large list of different events in the near future, including the results of horse races, sporting events, stock market fluctuations, the weather, etc. The player selects an event of his preference, and then the omniscient being presents the player with a choice of two disjoint sets of outcomes that will each occur exactly with probability 0.5 (the omniscient being knows everything about the present and can precisely evaluate, say, the probability of a certain team winning a football game). The player picks the side he likes. The player eventually receives $1.99 if his selection contains the actual result and receives nothing if it does not.
(real-life analogs: sports, horses)

This type of game is generally perceived as involving "skill". Yet, given the existence of the omniscient being, this also reduces to Game 1.
In reality, of course, there are no omniscient beings.

So sports betting is somewhere between Game 3 and the INVERSE of Game 3 (where the player is omniscient and the operator is not)... yet, each is essentially identical to Game 1. This leads to the idea that there is no "skill" WITHIN games like Game 3, rather, the "skill" would be the bettor identifying and utilizing opportunities where he is more knowledgeable than the other party. The skill is, at best, external to the game. On a fundamental level, this "profound" conclusion is about as interesting as the ideas "If you are offered $100 for free, take it" and "It is not worthwhile to set your dollar bill on fire for no reason".


All of these games are based upon the "player" choosing whether or not to engage in each of a set of wagers. Poker in no way reduces to this, as, say, a preflop decision in a multi-street poker game does not reduce to a situation of the form "getting X-1 on a Y-1 shot".

I wonder if any of this makes sense.

[Skallagrim]

Look, if it were just up to me I'd let folks spend their money pretty much anyway they please.

But to the general voting public, unlimited access to "gambling" is seen as a dangerous thing - I just dont think there is going to be enough political support to open up internet gambling in general in the US. But I think we can get the support for poker alone because of the popularity, the publicity, and because people are realizing that poker is the only traditional casino game in which you are not playing against the house and can actually expect to win money by being good at it. Get them to also see that its more skill than chance like "sports" and we are, IMHO, 95% home in making it legal everywhere.

Skallagrim

PS - and thanks to the post above for showing logically why a game of chance that involves some skill (sometimes a fair bit of skill, like sportbetting) is not the same as a game of skill that involves some chance.

[ekdikeo]

Considering that the legislature doesn't care if it's skill based or not, I don't see that as being an issue. The state sponsors a lottery. IMO, even going into the "proving poker is a game of skill" "debate" is just going through a bunch of motions that no politician even cares about. Most everything that you can place a bet on that's legal has little to no skill involved.

[Thremp]

Skallagrim,

Its just that. Its no more "skill based" than sports. I find the PPA and some of DS's arguments absurd and with little bearing on anything. Barney Frank makes a better argument in that adults should do what they want... And maybe we need to follow WTO judgments for the benefit of free trade?

[repulse]

There are pretty much two big issues with the UIGEA. One is that the entire basis of limiting the freedoms of adults to do what they please with their money without hurting anyone is absurd. The other is that poker was ignorantly treated as identical to slot machines, sports betting, and lotteries when the fundamental mechanics of poker make it vastly different from all of those.

Barney Frank is more concerned with the former, which is good, as most would consider it the more pressing "big picture" issue.

The PPA is more concerned with the latter. The "skill" arguments are only relevant in this part.

They are different pieces of the issue, and different people have different opinions about which one would be more effective to address for now.