Do televised poker tournaments hurt the skill vs luck argument?

[Lottery Larry]

Anyone think that the WSOP ME in the last few years, or the WPT tourney final tables, have been pretty counter-productive as regards the "skill vs luck" argument for poker?

[Orlando Salazar]

On a superficial level, it all looks like pure gambling/coin flipping. But when you see who makes the final tables, what position hands are played in, how the betting action goes, skill is evident. It just depends how deep the curious party looks. If they are objective and precise, our arguments are helped, otherwise....

[TomVeil]

I don't think that it much matters. Clearly tournaments are edited to give the most exciting hour that they can. That involves a lot of all-in coinflip situations. They don't explain (mostly) how those people built their stacks with solid play. The people who actually play know it's not just coin flips.

[Emperor]

[ QUOTE ]
Anyone think that the WSOP ME in the last few years, or the WPT tourney final tables, have been pretty counter-productive as regards the "skill vs luck" argument for poker?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes it hurts the skill vs luck argument, BUT it also gives hope to the fish.

Opposed to let say showing Brian Townsend playing cash games and hammering fish for hundreds of thousands. You could then show his PT stats, and fish would run and hide. You'd have them thinking beating Kasparov at chess would be easier.

No better to show some donkaments, miracle rivers, and millions being made by a guy who got lucky one day.

[Lottery Larry]

[ QUOTE ]

Yes it hurts the skill vs luck argument, BUT it also gives hope to the fish.

[/ QUOTE ]

While I agree, that wasn't the point of my post. In fact, I wasn't sure why they moved it out of Legislation, but whatever..

[Whitewash]

Just because the people making the FT of the main event the past few years aren't recognizable names doesn't mean they aren't in the top 10-20% of the field in terms of skill easily.

And the WPT has had several people make at least 5 final tables (each) in large field open events. Phil Ivey, Scotty Nguyen, Daniel Negreanu, etc

[Turn Prophet]

The mere fact that a good deal of people have won multiple titles in the last few years since Poker got "big" should be more than ample proof that Poker is primarily a game of skill with an element of luck in it.

[vixticator]

[ QUOTE ]
Opposed to let say showing Brian Townsend playing cash games and hammering fish for hundreds of thousands. You could then show his PT stats, and fish would run and hide. You'd have them thinking beating Kasparov at chess would be easier.

[/ QUOTE ]LOL, no.

I don't think anything will change the mind of people who think there is no skill involved. They will just believe winners win because of luck, variance or w/e. Hopefully more people are capable of understanding the math and can be shown how some players are better than others, etc., I hope most know this already but I fear it's not true...

[Seany Gee]

Television is fantastic for poker and is the reason for its world wide boom

however

the all-in fest's that people see in the shows such as the WPT final tables are very detrimental to the game at the lower levels, the dont understand the affect that the structure has, they dont get to see the start of the tournament with 1000 players playing 25/50 level avoiding coin flips, playing smallball/small pot poker etc etc, they cant really appreciate position or what the player went through to accumulate that 1 million plus stack

all they see is RAISE, ALL IN, and OH LOOK A 2 OUTER!

this is why i liked the coverage of the PPT that showed it in 4 quarters starting at level 1, it gave a better insight than most shows in relation to tournaments.

[Maliant]

HSP ftw unless Matusow is involved in a hand not a lot of all-in coinflips.