Argument: Poker is skill because it matters who you play

[Uglyowl]

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All games in which EV > 0 is achievable have 100% skill.


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I like this!

[popesc]

I don't think anybody questions that poker involves some skill. The legal test (at least in the recent NC case) is whether or not skill is the "predominant" factor. Quantifying the skills involved has already been done in other posts:

1) Having good starting hand requirments
2) Reading other players
3) Determining correct bet sizes
4) Calculating pot odds
5) Observing weaknesses in the play of others and exploiting it
etc.

The question that I am trying to address is whether skill is the predominant factor in poker. If chance is the predominant factor, then a rational player wouldn't worry about playing more skillful opponents.

[popesc]

Positive expectation is not an indicator of a game that is predominantly skill.

Blackjack players can achieve positive expectation via card counting.

Or, consider the following game: Flip a coin. If the result is heads, I'll pay you $2. If the result is tails, you pay me $1. You would clearly have a positive expectation, but the game would be 100% chance.

(My original post stated that all games played have some chance and some skill. It should have read "most games...")

[repulse]

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Positive expectation is not an indicator of a game that is predominantly skill.

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It is in zero-sum games though, right?


And I like the idea of the original post. It is far from seamless or even logically meaningful, but it is definitely a convincing argument as far as the semantic battle of the predominance test is concerned.

[popesc]

Zero-sum just means that for every dollar you win, I lose a dollar. In that respect my coin flip game is zero-sum, pure chance, and gives you a positive expectation (and me an equal but opposite negative expectation).

[Skallagrim]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't think anybody questions that poker involves some skill. The legal test (at least in the recent NC case) is whether or not skill is the "predominant" factor. Quantifying the skills involved has already been done in other posts:

1) Having good starting hand requirments
2) Reading other players
3) Determining correct bet sizes
4) Calculating pot odds
5) Observing weaknesses in the play of others and exploiting it
etc.

The question that I am trying to address is whether skill is the predominant factor in poker. If chance is the predominant factor, then a rational player wouldn't worry about playing more skillful opponents.

[/ QUOTE ]

Its not quantifying the skills thats at issue, its quantifying how often those skills make a difference and showing that its more than 1/2 the time.

I could say in response to your argument that it proves poker is only 10% skill because you know that chance will determine 90% of the hands, and skill 10% and therefore you would not want the more skilled player to win those extra 10% of the times.

Now, of course, the above numbers are pure fiction, but the logic applies. Even if I expect a more skilled person to beat me only a small percentage of the time as a result of his skill, I still would rather play the person who does not have that advantage.

Skallagrim

[popesc]

I don't think you can quantify what 50% skill means.

I was watching a baseball tournament (forgot which one), the series was tied 2-2, and the following statistic was placed on screen:

The winner of game 5 of a seven game series tied at 2-2 wins the tournament 76% of the time.

The announcer's seemed stunned about this fact. They seemed not to understand that if they flipped two coins instead of playing the last two games, the winner of game 5 would win 75% of the time.

If you start looking at statistics, you could probably convince somebody that baseball was a game of chance if you used the 50% chance criteria.

But if you want quantification, how about this:

Given the chance to play either a skillful opponent or a non-skillful opponent, I will choose the non-skillful opponent 100% of the time.

[Skallagrim]

There are 2 basic ways (so far) being discussed to quantify the effects of skill in poker:

First, the one I have proposed in numerous places (LOOK IT UP) that counts the number of hands decided by an action of a player against the number of hands decided by a final card (and ackowledges that an as yet unknown number of those final card hands must also be the result of player actions).

While numerous people have criticized my argument as irrelevant or going in the wrong direction, no one has yet refuted it.

The second argument, which no one has yet been able to quantify at all, is the manifesting of skill in the monetary results of skilled players. In other words, we all know Doyle B. wins more than an average guy at the same limits - that is his skill in action, but how can we show that his superior skill is making the difference over 50% of the time in any given hand, session, year or tournament? Or, in reverse, how could you prove that Doyle's skill is not just making him win an extra 10% of hands or money?

Skallagrim

[Uglyowl]

I would have vastly different set of results against different people. Why is that?

Are some people just inherently lucky that I would be playing against? No, I am better than some and worse than some (in other words, more skilled or less skilled)

[pokerrn72]

i would provide several graphs of winning player's results over 1,000,000 hands or so as convincing evidence that poker is predominantly a game of skill.

this seems irrefutable to me, as it is statistically impossible for someone to be lucky over that many hands.