Proof Poker is a Game of Skill

[Tim]

Here's a great quote I heard, and thought you might enjoy:

"You can lose at poker on purpose. You can't lose a coin flip on purpose. Therefore poker is not entirely luck, and must be at least partly skill."

Now I just have to figure out how to win the coin flips.

[Dave Sparrow]

Originally Posted by Tim

...and must be at least partly skill.

I don't think any sensible person would ever say anything else. The issue is always about how much skill, and I have no idea how you can ever figure that out.


Even baseball analysts can't work out how much luck/skill is involved for their game and there are more statistics collected for baseball than just about anything else on Earth I would guess.

Just to wind people up a bit more, you could make a case for baseball being far less skillful than football (I'm talking about soccer here, of course) by comparing the leagues.

I believe the typical MLB winner achieves about 65% wins with the worst team in the league achieving about 35%. By contrast, last years English Premiership saw the winner achieve approximately 75% wins with the worst team only winning 20% of their games.

You could therefore say that by having a more skillful team, the footballers can outgun their worst league opponents by almost 4 to 1 in terms of wins, but the best baseball players only achieve a 2 to 1 ratio and therefore there must be less skill in the game.

P.S. I know absolutely nothing at all about baseball (and not much more about soccer) but it does show the difficulty of figuring out how you'd assess the amount of skill in a sport or game - what criteria can you possibly use? It's a statistician's nightmare (or possibly a PhD thesis - hmm).

P.P.S. I still can't understand why people like baseball :)

[RyckyRych]

Other sports, more notably football and basketball, can have a single player help a team be more dominant. In baseball, even the most dominate batter only come to the plate 4 or 5 times a game. A starting pitcher only starts every 5 games and even the best closers in the game can be rendered nearly useless if you can't get a late lead to have him protect.

Each sport has a different skill set needed to be successful. I wouldn't really say one is that much less skillful than the other.

[malfunctioning]

Then do not forget to toss in the leagues themselves. American football, baseball, and hockey have all over the last few years been activating rules that have no purpose but to drive the scores up. In return for a higher scoring game, you get a case of more luck being a required skillset.

[Tim]

Originally Posted by Dave Sparrow

I don't think any sensible person would ever say anything else. The issue is always about how much skill, and I have no idea how you can ever figure that out.

Well, nobody here I hope. But since a large proportion of the population think poker is pure gambling, it's a nice little quote to throw back at these people.

I couldn't say which sports are more skillful than others. But nearly all involve some luck, and just like poker it'll even out in the long run. I think it's safe to say that poker involves more luck in the short term than any sport I can think of, but poker is one big long game, right?

Oh and as for sports comparisons, I hope you all enjoyed Ashley's latest article 'Quitters Never Win'.

[Dave Sparrow]

Originally Posted by RyckyRych

A starting pitcher only starts every 5 games and even the best closers in the game can be rendered nearly useless if you can't get a late lead to have him protect.

I wish I knew what any of that meant.

Next week let's do cricket - surely the only sport where a game can last five days and people can still be pleased with a draw :)

Originally Posted by Tim

I hope you all enjoyed Ashley's latest article 'Quitters Never Win'.

I think knowing when to quit is one of the most important aspects of poker, especially in a live cash game when it's often extremely hard to get up and leave.

[RyckyRych]

Cricket fascinates me actually... seems like the game never ends.

Simply put, whereas in basketball a single player can sometimes almost single-handedly carry a team, in baseball that is just not possible over a 162-game season.

Also think of this example. A player that hits .320 is considered to be exceptional yet he is successful less than a third of the time. Another hitting .240 would be thought of as below average. That first batter is getting a hit at a rate of 150% of the other... quite a large percentage! That would seem to me that there is quite a gap between the skill of these players... I doubt we can attest this to luck.

Of course we can make this a LOT more complicated by bringing in other aspects like each player's power, speed, strikeout rate, and a bunch of other things that you wouldn't have any care to know. :)

Another thing. I have no idea how many games are played over a season in the sports you follow, but how many play 162 games? Even the worst baseball teams can win 10 games in a row and good ones can lose 10 straight as well. Doing that in a 16-game NFL season would be fatal. The more games you play, the more "luck" will balance out.

[Dave Sparrow]

Originally Posted by RyckyRych

I have no idea how many games are played over a season...The more games you play, the more "luck" will balance out.

In the English top soccer league it's 38 games in a season - and your point is well made. Another argument for considering poker as a 'long game' if you want skill to prevail?

[RyckyRych]

Damn I hope so... my short game has been horrible... and I don't mean my putting. :)

[TheCol]

I think poker is a skill game compared to like a slot machine. When I go to a casino I dont play slots very much all because you put your money in the slot machine and pull the handle and hope to win.Thats gambling your money.You dont have any prediction of what that slot machine is going to do.
Now when you sit at a poker table you get to see free cards if your not in the blinds and you also get to choose your cards before you even bet. When you choose your cards you are increasing your odds of winning, thats not gambling. Gambling is playing every hand that is dealt to you and hope to catch cards.
Also you can have a losing hand and make it a winning hand by bluffing. You cant bluff a slot machine.
Poker is a SKILL game.