Is Poker A Game Of Skill Or Luck?
December 17, 2009 by admin
Filed under Sports And Fitness
Adel Awwad asked:
One of the ways to suggest an answer to the question of skill or luck is to watch the TV tournaments and notice how often some professional players seem to make the final table. Another clue to this question is taking stock of a local poker room and who seems to win more often than not. Some players are luckier than others, but it seems that skill over time wins out over luck. This is particularly true in cash games. Luck in tournaments does play a bigger part since one bad bet can end the tournament for a solid player. In tournaments you can often see a river card out of nowhere beat a very good starting hand of a professional and the amateur that lucked out continues in the game.
Many state legislatures have decided in favor of skill when letting poker rooms legally run in the state. The skill quality of the game overcame the prohibition against gambling. Watch the fate of any new player learning the game during the early stages of their learning curve and you can easily see that their skill level is suspect and they only seem to win with lucky draws or very powerful starting hands. They are lost when it comes to knowing when to bluff or play a marginal hand. Solid players who have a knack for doing the right move at the right time are the personification of poker skill. They rarely make a playing mistake and are only beat by an unexpected draw of luck or four running suited cards in the flop to give the Ace holding player a flush. You see many hands like this in online tournaments. Watching pairs of Aces get cracked online is an ugly display of how fickle the game can be at times.
Knowledge and experience are usually rewarded in a cash game and to a lesser degree in tournaments. The big reason for the difference is the player can rebuy in the cash game and when they lose their starting stack in a tournament they are knocked out of the tournament. Tournament play does seem to have a greater element of luck in its play. This is especially true when these Internet players are willing to go all in at the start of a hand. They play power poker and do not wait to see if they make their hand or not. In cases like this you may as well be playing showdown and not Holdem. Big pairs are likely to be over bet before the flop in tournaments and under bet in cash games. Patience also seems to be a bigger factor in cash games and less of an element in tournament play. Tournaments reward very aggressive play far more than cash games. As a group of players, cash game professionals are often more skillful players.
The betting level of the game also seems to bring more skill into play. The higher the betting level the more skill you will see in the play. Low-level games are hard to win with just skill, as there are too many players who will call even when the odds are very much out of favor toward them. No limit games will be filled with skillful players who know how to play. This is true in spades if the blinds are also very high. Players who are learning would be advised to stick with the lower level games until they have a better understanding of how the game should be played.
Making set up bets and bluffing are not the new player’s best play. Skilled players do it all of the time. They also seem to know exactly the amount they should wager to get their opponent to call. Getting the maximum amount of money for a winning hand is a learned skill and not a play that should be left to luck.
The other part of luck versus skill is luck cannot be counted on from day to day, but skill can be maintained from one session to the next. This alone may be the reason that familiar faces are seen at tournament after tournament. It is hard to beat a player who plays well and makes few mistakes. As the song goes, they know when to Holdem and when to Foldem. Mistake free play is hard to win against when a player is counting on lucky draws to bail them out of bad calls. Players sitting at a poker table make miracle draws every day. The difference from a skill standpoint is the odds are taken into account before the draw and the player knows that the play will depend on the odds. The player who depends on luck to win will be disappointed many times and does not even consider the odds of the play they are making. A blind eye to the odds of the play can be very costly over time and over many poker sessions.
Conclusions
Most solid players would come down on the side of skill in this debate. They saw it happen in their own play, as they got better at the game of poker. Early on they had games where they got very lucky, but over time they began to realize that they could not depend on luck to win. As they learned more about the inner workings of the game, they began to play with greater skill and their wins and losses were reversed to the win side of the ledger. Many of these same players have had two other significant advantages over the older players. They could read any of the really good books on poker that are now available. They could also play thousands of hands on the Internet at online poker rooms. The old time poker players had to spend a long time playing poker to log the same number of games and the experience that real time play gives to a player. This accounts to some degree for the young players doing so well in tournaments. Skill in the long run is the bread and butter to a winning poker player.
One of the ways to suggest an answer to the question of skill or luck is to watch the TV tournaments and notice how often some professional players seem to make the final table. Another clue to this question is taking stock of a local poker room and who seems to win more often than not. Some players are luckier than others, but it seems that skill over time wins out over luck. This is particularly true in cash games. Luck in tournaments does play a bigger part since one bad bet can end the tournament for a solid player. In tournaments you can often see a river card out of nowhere beat a very good starting hand of a professional and the amateur that lucked out continues in the game.
Many state legislatures have decided in favor of skill when letting poker rooms legally run in the state. The skill quality of the game overcame the prohibition against gambling. Watch the fate of any new player learning the game during the early stages of their learning curve and you can easily see that their skill level is suspect and they only seem to win with lucky draws or very powerful starting hands. They are lost when it comes to knowing when to bluff or play a marginal hand. Solid players who have a knack for doing the right move at the right time are the personification of poker skill. They rarely make a playing mistake and are only beat by an unexpected draw of luck or four running suited cards in the flop to give the Ace holding player a flush. You see many hands like this in online tournaments. Watching pairs of Aces get cracked online is an ugly display of how fickle the game can be at times.
Knowledge and experience are usually rewarded in a cash game and to a lesser degree in tournaments. The big reason for the difference is the player can rebuy in the cash game and when they lose their starting stack in a tournament they are knocked out of the tournament. Tournament play does seem to have a greater element of luck in its play. This is especially true when these Internet players are willing to go all in at the start of a hand. They play power poker and do not wait to see if they make their hand or not. In cases like this you may as well be playing showdown and not Holdem. Big pairs are likely to be over bet before the flop in tournaments and under bet in cash games. Patience also seems to be a bigger factor in cash games and less of an element in tournament play. Tournaments reward very aggressive play far more than cash games. As a group of players, cash game professionals are often more skillful players.
The betting level of the game also seems to bring more skill into play. The higher the betting level the more skill you will see in the play. Low-level games are hard to win with just skill, as there are too many players who will call even when the odds are very much out of favor toward them. No limit games will be filled with skillful players who know how to play. This is true in spades if the blinds are also very high. Players who are learning would be advised to stick with the lower level games until they have a better understanding of how the game should be played.
Making set up bets and bluffing are not the new player’s best play. Skilled players do it all of the time. They also seem to know exactly the amount they should wager to get their opponent to call. Getting the maximum amount of money for a winning hand is a learned skill and not a play that should be left to luck.
The other part of luck versus skill is luck cannot be counted on from day to day, but skill can be maintained from one session to the next. This alone may be the reason that familiar faces are seen at tournament after tournament. It is hard to beat a player who plays well and makes few mistakes. As the song goes, they know when to Holdem and when to Foldem. Mistake free play is hard to win against when a player is counting on lucky draws to bail them out of bad calls. Players sitting at a poker table make miracle draws every day. The difference from a skill standpoint is the odds are taken into account before the draw and the player knows that the play will depend on the odds. The player who depends on luck to win will be disappointed many times and does not even consider the odds of the play they are making. A blind eye to the odds of the play can be very costly over time and over many poker sessions.
Conclusions
Most solid players would come down on the side of skill in this debate. They saw it happen in their own play, as they got better at the game of poker. Early on they had games where they got very lucky, but over time they began to realize that they could not depend on luck to win. As they learned more about the inner workings of the game, they began to play with greater skill and their wins and losses were reversed to the win side of the ledger. Many of these same players have had two other significant advantages over the older players. They could read any of the really good books on poker that are now available. They could also play thousands of hands on the Internet at online poker rooms. The old time poker players had to spend a long time playing poker to log the same number of games and the experience that real time play gives to a player. This accounts to some degree for the young players doing so well in tournaments. Skill in the long run is the bread and butter to a winning poker player.
The Game of Skill, Part I: Historical Evidence
May 30, 2009 by admin
Filed under Card Games
M.J. Morgan asked:
New evidence of the great importance of skill in poker has revived the debate held for several years by legal authorities, scholars and poker experts. The efforts of the poker industry to claim legitimacy of the game has had historically importance that has paved the road for its current popularity as well as for its future settlement as a skill game.
The following is a chronological compilation of the progress made by several representatives of the poker industry and their success at defending their love and passion for the game.
1986
Professional player Billy Baxter was taken to court by the IRS claiming he was withholding taxes of his poker winnings. The IRS presented to the court two possible ways of taxing Baxter. Considering his poker profession an activity based on time, energy and skill, it would be defined as “trade or business,” his poker winnings would be considered earned income and it would be taxed at a maximum rate of 50% for “personal service income.” However, if the court ruled that his winnings emerged from a game of chance instead of a career based on skill, then he would be taxed 70%. The judge ruled in favor of Baxter, saying he considered the IRS allegations as ridiculous, and challenging the officials to play poker with the defendant. The court found Baxter’s poker winnings as derived completely form his personal services, using his same winning capital as a tool to finance his poker profession, which has multiplied only due to his skills at poker, not due to a professional service or business operation. After this case’s ruling, Russia and Denmark have also officially declared poker as a game of skill.
1989
In a court case where the operational fate of California’s card rooms was in peril, the judge ruled in favor of the poker industry by saying poker was a game of skill, therefore allowing local gaming venues to remain in business.
2004
Duplicate Poker Inc. launched its duplicate poker variation as a game of skill, which eliminates the gambling law persecution that has been haunting the poker industry during the last 3 years. Therefore, their clever marketing strategy has allowed even players located in the U.S to make credit card transactions directly into their accounts and play at large without any worries.
2006
The U.S. Department of Labour recognized professional poker playing as an official occupation.
Economist Steven Levitt, co-author of the best-selling book Freakonomics, launched a project called Pokernomics, which will analyze the factors that make some players better than others. He and his team decided to conduct the study by encouraging players to submit their poker hand stories to their website, aiming at analyzing more than a million hands overall. Levitt requested a minimum of 10,000 hands per player in order to identify their style patterns. He is still conducting the study without any aid from the poker industry.
2007
A group called the Poker Player Alliance, formed by top poker players and scholars, held an exploratory conference at the Harvard Faculty Club, to which many faculty members attended, including law professor Charles Nesson, who officiated the meeting and hopes, as he said, to someday “legitimate poker.”
Statician Jay Kadane from the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh stated he believed statistics can be used to determine what makes some poker players better than others. Kadane started looking for sponsors to fund the statistical project, which will feature huge hand databases to prove the percentage of skill needed in poker versus the percentage of luck.
Greensburg defense attorney Lawrence Burns is defending the legality of his poker tournaments in the Westmoreland County area for some months. Local police had busted one of his tournaments, confiscating personal property related to poker during the raid. Burns claims he violated no state law because face-to-face poker tournaments are not illegal in Pennsylvania and because poker relies on skill, not chance. Police is arguing that Burns did violate the state gambling law that prohibits “any person to collect and assemble for the purpose of unlawful gambling at any place under his control.” However, the court would have to analyze the case and determine if the tournament was a friendly poker game, (which is not a crime, if it is based on skill), and if the fact that there money was exchanged for a place in the game does violate state regulations.
A contest named “First Man-Machine Poker Championship” offered a $50,000 prize, and the chosen human contestants were Phil Laak and Ali Eslami. They were supposed to play against a program called Polaris, created by a team of researchers of Artificial Intelligence of the University of Alberta. Even though the poker masters were beat during the first and second rounds, they ended defeating the program during the third round, even thought the research team increased the level of difficulty of the program by introducing adaptability and learning traits to change strategy. Even though they ended victorious both players agreed that the program challenged them more than human contenders usually do.
Florida Rep. Robert Wexler sponsored The Skill Game Protection Act, which will separate games which rely predominantly on skill – poker, backgammon, bridge, chess and mahjong – from games of chance, and protect them from federal restrictions against playing online. It will also prohibit minors from playing for real money online. This would consequently require casinos to report winners and winnings to the IRS, starting next year.
2008
Two Psychology Ph.D. students at Case Western University in Cleveland conducted two studies with 41 college students as subjects. The students were divided into two groups: one receiving poker strategy instructions and the other group only receiving some background on the history of poker. The first study consisted of playing 200 hands of Turbo Texas Hold’em, a computerized simulation of 10-player poker tables. The second study had the same procedure as the first one, providing more strategy instructions to the previously instructed group and more poker history to the other group; the only difference was that in this study the subjects played 720 hands. Overall results showed the group that received tips for improving skill had remarkably better results than the uninstructed group.
Hopefully, the pending outcome for some of these projects and efforts will favor poker’s legitimacy as a game of skill. On that day, the gaming industry will finally stop worrying about the regulatory persecution that distracts talented players from fully enjoying their job and potential poker stars from achieving their dreams.
Next: The Game of Skill, Part II: 8 Compelling Arguments
New evidence of the great importance of skill in poker has revived the debate held for several years by legal authorities, scholars and poker experts. The efforts of the poker industry to claim legitimacy of the game has had historically importance that has paved the road for its current popularity as well as for its future settlement as a skill game.
The following is a chronological compilation of the progress made by several representatives of the poker industry and their success at defending their love and passion for the game.
1986
Professional player Billy Baxter was taken to court by the IRS claiming he was withholding taxes of his poker winnings. The IRS presented to the court two possible ways of taxing Baxter. Considering his poker profession an activity based on time, energy and skill, it would be defined as “trade or business,” his poker winnings would be considered earned income and it would be taxed at a maximum rate of 50% for “personal service income.” However, if the court ruled that his winnings emerged from a game of chance instead of a career based on skill, then he would be taxed 70%. The judge ruled in favor of Baxter, saying he considered the IRS allegations as ridiculous, and challenging the officials to play poker with the defendant. The court found Baxter’s poker winnings as derived completely form his personal services, using his same winning capital as a tool to finance his poker profession, which has multiplied only due to his skills at poker, not due to a professional service or business operation. After this case’s ruling, Russia and Denmark have also officially declared poker as a game of skill.
1989
In a court case where the operational fate of California’s card rooms was in peril, the judge ruled in favor of the poker industry by saying poker was a game of skill, therefore allowing local gaming venues to remain in business.
2004
Duplicate Poker Inc. launched its duplicate poker variation as a game of skill, which eliminates the gambling law persecution that has been haunting the poker industry during the last 3 years. Therefore, their clever marketing strategy has allowed even players located in the U.S to make credit card transactions directly into their accounts and play at large without any worries.
2006
The U.S. Department of Labour recognized professional poker playing as an official occupation.
Economist Steven Levitt, co-author of the best-selling book Freakonomics, launched a project called Pokernomics, which will analyze the factors that make some players better than others. He and his team decided to conduct the study by encouraging players to submit their poker hand stories to their website, aiming at analyzing more than a million hands overall. Levitt requested a minimum of 10,000 hands per player in order to identify their style patterns. He is still conducting the study without any aid from the poker industry.
2007
A group called the Poker Player Alliance, formed by top poker players and scholars, held an exploratory conference at the Harvard Faculty Club, to which many faculty members attended, including law professor Charles Nesson, who officiated the meeting and hopes, as he said, to someday “legitimate poker.”
Statician Jay Kadane from the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh stated he believed statistics can be used to determine what makes some poker players better than others. Kadane started looking for sponsors to fund the statistical project, which will feature huge hand databases to prove the percentage of skill needed in poker versus the percentage of luck.
Greensburg defense attorney Lawrence Burns is defending the legality of his poker tournaments in the Westmoreland County area for some months. Local police had busted one of his tournaments, confiscating personal property related to poker during the raid. Burns claims he violated no state law because face-to-face poker tournaments are not illegal in Pennsylvania and because poker relies on skill, not chance. Police is arguing that Burns did violate the state gambling law that prohibits “any person to collect and assemble for the purpose of unlawful gambling at any place under his control.” However, the court would have to analyze the case and determine if the tournament was a friendly poker game, (which is not a crime, if it is based on skill), and if the fact that there money was exchanged for a place in the game does violate state regulations.
A contest named “First Man-Machine Poker Championship” offered a $50,000 prize, and the chosen human contestants were Phil Laak and Ali Eslami. They were supposed to play against a program called Polaris, created by a team of researchers of Artificial Intelligence of the University of Alberta. Even though the poker masters were beat during the first and second rounds, they ended defeating the program during the third round, even thought the research team increased the level of difficulty of the program by introducing adaptability and learning traits to change strategy. Even though they ended victorious both players agreed that the program challenged them more than human contenders usually do.
Florida Rep. Robert Wexler sponsored The Skill Game Protection Act, which will separate games which rely predominantly on skill – poker, backgammon, bridge, chess and mahjong – from games of chance, and protect them from federal restrictions against playing online. It will also prohibit minors from playing for real money online. This would consequently require casinos to report winners and winnings to the IRS, starting next year.
2008
Two Psychology Ph.D. students at Case Western University in Cleveland conducted two studies with 41 college students as subjects. The students were divided into two groups: one receiving poker strategy instructions and the other group only receiving some background on the history of poker. The first study consisted of playing 200 hands of Turbo Texas Hold’em, a computerized simulation of 10-player poker tables. The second study had the same procedure as the first one, providing more strategy instructions to the previously instructed group and more poker history to the other group; the only difference was that in this study the subjects played 720 hands. Overall results showed the group that received tips for improving skill had remarkably better results than the uninstructed group.
Hopefully, the pending outcome for some of these projects and efforts will favor poker’s legitimacy as a game of skill. On that day, the gaming industry will finally stop worrying about the regulatory persecution that distracts talented players from fully enjoying their job and potential poker stars from achieving their dreams.
Next: The Game of Skill, Part II: 8 Compelling Arguments
Clearly, poker is a game of skill. Or is it?
May 6, 2009 by admin
Filed under Online Gambling
Cary Clark asked:
Run a quick web search for “Is poker a game of skill?” and you’ll find dozens of sources. This is, of course, a subjective question. But there is also ample evidence to support the proposition that the classic game of poker is unlike many other casino favorites when it comes to the matter of skill, While success at typical casino offerings such as keno and roulette clearly require luck and little more, unique skills and some experience enable talented poker players to be successful even during runs of bad luck.
Great poker pros such as Doyle Brunson, Chris Ferguson, Barry Greenstein and others have years of experience calculating odds and reading their opponents tendencies. And most of these successful pros teach that success at poker is up to 90% skill and only 10% luck. Other knowledgeable estimates put the contribution of skill to success at poker anywhere from 60% to 80%, with luck accounting for the balance.
At www.newscientist.com, the web site for the weekly international science magazine New Scientist, it is clear that answering this question of whether poker is a game of skill with mathematics is difficult if not impossible. New studies, however, do indicate that skill plays a much more significant part in success at poker than was previously thought. Even so, the game is still regulated just like all other games of chance such as keno and roulette.
In Germany, two researchers tracked the play of more than 50,000 players in an attempt to answer the question about skill in poker. After monitoring some 13 hours of online play the researchers determined that skill does indeed lead to greater success in terms of both win/loss percentage and average value of money won or lost. But still the question persists: Is poker a game of skill?
Another study of more than 100 million hands showed that in 75% of the hands the winner was determined before a showdown. This observation again comes down on the side of the argument that skill plays the most important role. Here, one of the players was able to force the other player to fold because of his manipulation of the betting process. Since the actual value of the two hands never came into play, this would seem to be clear evidence of the value of skill in poker. Some experts, most notably the legendary poker pro Amarillo Slim, don’t believe in luck at all.
They believe that, while players may have some streaks where the cards seem to flow in their direction, the skill involved still represents at least 90% of the outcome. Indeed most experts believe that both skill and luck influence the game, but that when playing the same card/player situation over an extended period of time skill and experience will win the vast majority of the time. Again, the people with the most experience continue to call poker a game of skill.
Perhaps the final word on this brief look at whether or not poker is a game of skill should be given to the academics. In Science Daily, an online news source featuring news and articles submitted by universities and other research institutions, Michael DeDonno of Case Western Reserve University writes that the evidence in favor of skill is strong enough to have an effect on the gaming industry as well as on legal cases. His work shows that players with sound strategy and even a basic knowledge about a good poker hand will succeed a vast majority of the time.
While most seem to agree that skill plays a bigger part in success at poker than luck, the question of whether poker is a game of skill will continue to be debated wherever players gather. Your best option is simply to play this great game long enough so that you can feel competent enough to answer the question yourself.
Run a quick web search for “Is poker a game of skill?” and you’ll find dozens of sources. This is, of course, a subjective question. But there is also ample evidence to support the proposition that the classic game of poker is unlike many other casino favorites when it comes to the matter of skill, While success at typical casino offerings such as keno and roulette clearly require luck and little more, unique skills and some experience enable talented poker players to be successful even during runs of bad luck.
Great poker pros such as Doyle Brunson, Chris Ferguson, Barry Greenstein and others have years of experience calculating odds and reading their opponents tendencies. And most of these successful pros teach that success at poker is up to 90% skill and only 10% luck. Other knowledgeable estimates put the contribution of skill to success at poker anywhere from 60% to 80%, with luck accounting for the balance.
At www.newscientist.com, the web site for the weekly international science magazine New Scientist, it is clear that answering this question of whether poker is a game of skill with mathematics is difficult if not impossible. New studies, however, do indicate that skill plays a much more significant part in success at poker than was previously thought. Even so, the game is still regulated just like all other games of chance such as keno and roulette.
In Germany, two researchers tracked the play of more than 50,000 players in an attempt to answer the question about skill in poker. After monitoring some 13 hours of online play the researchers determined that skill does indeed lead to greater success in terms of both win/loss percentage and average value of money won or lost. But still the question persists: Is poker a game of skill?
Another study of more than 100 million hands showed that in 75% of the hands the winner was determined before a showdown. This observation again comes down on the side of the argument that skill plays the most important role. Here, one of the players was able to force the other player to fold because of his manipulation of the betting process. Since the actual value of the two hands never came into play, this would seem to be clear evidence of the value of skill in poker. Some experts, most notably the legendary poker pro Amarillo Slim, don’t believe in luck at all.
They believe that, while players may have some streaks where the cards seem to flow in their direction, the skill involved still represents at least 90% of the outcome. Indeed most experts believe that both skill and luck influence the game, but that when playing the same card/player situation over an extended period of time skill and experience will win the vast majority of the time. Again, the people with the most experience continue to call poker a game of skill.
Perhaps the final word on this brief look at whether or not poker is a game of skill should be given to the academics. In Science Daily, an online news source featuring news and articles submitted by universities and other research institutions, Michael DeDonno of Case Western Reserve University writes that the evidence in favor of skill is strong enough to have an effect on the gaming industry as well as on legal cases. His work shows that players with sound strategy and even a basic knowledge about a good poker hand will succeed a vast majority of the time.
While most seem to agree that skill plays a bigger part in success at poker than luck, the question of whether poker is a game of skill will continue to be debated wherever players gather. Your best option is simply to play this great game long enough so that you can feel competent enough to answer the question yourself.
