poker: a game of luck?

[Swift_Psycho 1]

You are all saying"luck" changes at different Levels.Can you argue with me there?I'm simply telling you that luck remains the same consistant factor at any time., But i will say that you experience much more "bad beats". at lower limits.This form of bad luck is much more dominant than any "good luck" at high levels.i've never seen a hand finish "pre-river" in any micro limit game.Which means, you have to have the "winning hand"

Hehehehehe. You sound like you are trying really hard to minimize how bad you look in saying that it requires more luck to win at lower levels.Anyway, luck doesn't "change" or anything at any level. It does become more of a factor in higher level games because the level of competition is closer. When there is less of a difference in skill, luck takes over that difference.

[Abbaddabba 0]

What is this????.. So if your magic "theory" was correct.. Pro players would drop in limits. as their skill increased???Now does that make sense???????????

Lower percentage gains, but higher absolute gains. Making 5BB an hour at the 3/6 table versus making 1BB an hour at the 1500/3000 games. To the original poster:How much of poker is luck? Enough to keep it profitable for competent players. If bad players always lost, they'd quit. As it stands, there are terrible players everywhere who attribute their consistent losses to bad luck, and have far more vivid memories of the wins. The fuzzy math adds up in their favor every time. God bless fuzzy math and all that it compels idiots to do.

[Swift_Psycho 1]

i've never seen a hand finish "pre-river" in any micro limit game.Which is why luck is so much more of a factor at higher limits.When you understand that you'll probably be a much better Holdem player and feel really stupid about this post.

Bluffing out your opponents TPTK, with your crap, is luck?

When you are facing opponents who are capable of doing the same to you, your argument isn't so good anymore. Call me crazy, but I think that if you asked Daniel if he'd rather play Juanda heads-up or some random "low-limit" guy who will call him all the way to the river all the time, I think he probably chooses the latter. Just my opinion. I might be wrong. What am I saying? I'm not wrong.

[CANADA2144 0]

I didn't get out my TI-89 and graph a function of it. I used the word calculate in a non-mathematical sense. If that's all you gained from reading the post, you may just want to stick to Green Eggs and Ham.

I reccomend the T1-83.... excellent calculator at an economical price, pick it up at any staples store worldwide.

[wrto4556 0]

Which means, you have to have the "winning hand"

But you know which hands to play in what position and what plays have a higher +EV. That gives you a skillfull edge over your opponents. Better players know the same things, and that's why luck is more of a factor. You're looking at this all wrong. Step back and quit being hard headed and reread the post.

[OnTilt18 0]

I think Abbaddabba makes an excellent point. If you know anything about poker, you know that its popularity has skyrocketed over the past few years. This is due to the fact that, besides its addicting nature, poker is the one sport that any player can essentially "win" at. Any amature can get lucky and win a tournament. Look at any other sport, and the comparisons are non-existent. I obviously wouldn't be able to walk out onto an NFL football field and lead the league in rushing. Moneymaker was an amature, and he won the World Series of Poker, an event that would have been unheard of 20 years ago. This idea of "getting a few lucky hands" and ultimately winning a tournament or cash game influences an amature to want to play. A professional, thus seeing that the amature is willing to throw money into a pot, is in turn influenced to play as well. So, therefore, I will add something to my original post. Although luck is the devil when your opponent spikes a gut-shot straight on the river, it can also be looked at as the underlying impetus of poker. If players didn't think they could get lucky, they would never start playing. And, thus, money would only be passed back and forth among the experienced players.

[Chiggleslap 0]

My TI-89 has a Luck v. Skill function, and after I input "Poker" and hit ENTER, the answer I got from the calculator was "More skill than luck" with a standard deviation of 50%.I think that the calculator was trying to get philosophical on me though. Like it was trying to say that, for unskilled players, luck is almost 100% of the game, and for skilled players, luck is almost 0% of the game, unless you look at it from the standpoint of to what degree the luck factor affects ones emotions, in which case, for a skilled player, luck would be almost 100% of the game, since it is when skilled players get unlucky that the game actually diverges from its normality of earning the skilled player money, in other words, that the very reason that poker is a "game" at all is because of the luck factor, otherwise it would just be a job with a guarunteed hourly wage, or perhaps that for a weak player, skill is 100% of the game since it is skill itself that prevents them from winning. I think the calculator was trying to tell me that it all depends on the point of view and on which of the many facets of the game you decide to bring your focus. Barring all smart-ass responses from calculators, I'd lay $80,000 to $1 that poker is 73.7% luck and 168.9% skill.TI-89's are crafty little bastards.

[Royal_Tour 0]

You're looking at this all wrong. Step back and quit being hard headed and reread the post.You are comparing Skill Vs. Skill.. This is a comparison of luck present at certain tables.Call me crazy, but I think that if you asked Daniel if he'd rather play Juanda heads-up or some random "low-limit" guy who will call him all the way to the river all the time, I think he probably chooses the latter. Just my opinion. I might be wrong. What am I saying? I'm not wrong.K. stop for a minute. If we eliminate the value of money, like many players do at low limits, then we end up with a bunch of call stations, and a couple aggressive raisers.Now i would much rather take a one on one agianst Juanda, rather than 7 - 1 against a bunch of bottomless money pits. (the best starting hand in poker, loses 40% of the time). You are more susceptible to lose when your faced against 7 other callers.Making 5BB an hour at the 3/6 table versus making 1BB an hour at the 1500/3000 games. It is not an argument of money, or profit being made. eliminate the 3/6 value, or the 1500/3000 value. Lets just give a simple example that a few players are playing with their lives. Now skill vs. skill is one thing. But if you have players who are not affraid of death, then you need to be lucky to survive. And this is the case with low micro limits.Now lets say all the players have similar skill. Yet they are all affraid of dying. Now the ability to bluff has been introduced, and the introduction of bluffing subtracts from the luck portion of the game.

[justblaze 0]

Royal_Tour, i hate to break it to you but you are way off. You are misunderstanding the point. there isn't 'more' luck at higher limits, but the influence of luck on the results as compared to skill is higher. this is because at higher limits most of the players are relatively equal in skill. the 'best' players have only a small edge over the 'fish'. At low limits the fish will call down with 103. The edge here for even moderately skilled players is enormous. Are you honestly going to sit there and tell me you'd rather play John Juanda heads up than Low Limit Lenny? Yea, great, he'll call you with anything. JUST WAIT FOR A GOOD HAND AND YOU'RE SURE TO GET PAID. It would be a lot harder to beat JJ, trust me.

[DeNuts1 0]

JMO...but when you say you would rather play Juanda than a low limit player...I think you just lost the argument.

[Royal_Tour 0]

JUSTBLAZE. I'm not arguing the fact that skill vs skill. luck can become the deciding factor.Just hear me out. U wait for your hand, you have AA, in heads up against lenny low limit, with his 8, 3 you are a huge favourite. 80% (roughly)Now AA vs. 6 other callers. You have dropped below 50%I understand exactly what you are saying. But do you think DN would contribute his success as player of the year to luck, or rather skill?

[Daysleeper 0]

I would probably also play Juanda if we eliminated the money. I would lose sure but it would be funNow if there is money involved you would have to chain me to the table to get me to play.Also wasn't it Mike Caro that said that the winner in anygiven tournament is mostly decided by luck(getting AA vs KK etc)

[princeof56k 0]

Just hear me out. U wait for your hand, you have AA, in heads up against lenny low limit, with his 8, 3 you are a huge favourite. 80% (roughly)Now AA vs. 6 other callers. You have dropped below 50%

Are you trying to say that you would rather be in a game where only one person would call you AA then a game where 6 people would call?If 6 six people are calling my AA, I'm doing cartwheels. Its lack of skill on their part for calling my raise with garbage.

[justblaze 0]

JUSTBLAZE. I'm not arguing the fact that skill vs skill. luck can become the deciding factor.Just hear me out. U wait for your hand, you have AA, in heads up against lenny low limit, with his 8, 3 you are a huge favourite. 80% (roughly)Now AA vs. 6 other callers. You have dropped below 50%I understand exactly what you are saying. But do you think DN would contribute his success as player of the year to luck, or rather skill?

ok but look at it like this: HU against Lenny, you will make, for sake of argument, 1BB 8 times, and lose 1BB two times, for an EV of 0.6, right? Now Lenny brings his 5 friends, and you are only winning 40% of the time (again, for the sake of argument), but are collecting 1BB from each bozo every time you win. So, 4 times you make 6BB, and 6 times you lose 1BB for an EV of 1.8. While the number of pots you win goes down, the amount of money you win goes way up. This is due to the influence of skill. Hand selection is a skill, and you are just more skilled at hand selection than Lenny & Co. At higher limits, you wont get 6 idiots calling you down (which, as i have just demonstrated, you actually want to happen). You might not even get anyone to call you down unless you get lucky (or rather, they get unlucky) and villain catches a hand like KK that he cant get away from. That would be luck. Your opponent is using good hand selection, but was unlucky in that he ran into a monster. Let me answer your question about DN by asking another question: If DN were to beat the 10-20 at Casino Rama for 3BB/100, he would attribute that to his vastly superior skill as compared to most everyone in that game. Now, if DN were to beat the 4k 8k at the Bellagio for 3BB/100, do you think he would be able to attribute the win rate to the same skill differential? or do you think he might admit that the cards were just falling his way?

[Royal_Tour 0]

Well the cards have to fall your way regardless. But obviously he has more skill over low limit players. Now skill in poker can be contributed to the ability to select hands, knowing when to get your money, in.. or out, Your odds and calculations, and last but not least your bluffing, and player reads. If you elimnate the last one (bluffing and player reads), the whole luck factor increase (does it not?)+ or - EV is correct. I agree with you there. but thats only one section of the skill (what hands to play, and when to get your money in)I'm willing to admit defeat if you can convince me "without the use of a dollar value" that bluffing, and opponent reads is useless amongst top players because their success is contributed to luck.

[justblaze 0]

Well the cards have to fall your way regardless. But obviously he has more skill over low limit players. Now skill in poker can be contributed to the ability to select hands, knowing when to get your money, in.. or out, Your odds and calculations, and last but not least your bluffing, and player reads. If you elimnate the last one (bluffing and player reads), the whole luck factor increase (does it not?)+ or - EV is correct. I agree with you there. but thats only one section of the skill (what hands to play, and when to get your money in)I'm willing to admit defeat if you can convince me "without the use of a dollar value" that bluffing, and opponent reads is useless amongst top players because their success is contributed to luck.

Now skill in poker can be contributed to the ability to select hands, knowing when to get your money, in.. or out, Your odds and calculations, and last but not least your bluffing, and player reads. If you elimnate the last one (bluffing and player reads), the whole luck factor increase (does it not?)Not if, in exchange for notbeing able to apply bluffing and player reads, we get an exponentially larger edge in all the other categories. + or - EV is correct. I agree with you there. but thats only one section of the skill (what hands to play, and when to get your money in)I'm making the assumption that all other things are equal. Of course, they're usually not, but a reasonably skilled player should expect to extract MORE than average those 4/10 times AA holds up and lose LESS than average the times it loses, so the EV increase is actually more dramatic. I'm willing to admit defeat if you can convince me "without the use of a dollar value" that bluffing, and opponent reads is useless amongst top players because their success is contributed to luck.I can't argue that it is useless. What i can say is compare the 4k 8k game to a 15-30 game. In the 15-30 game some players will be significantly better at either bluffing, reading players, or both, as compared to other players in the game. At 4k 8k, the disparity in this skill will be marginal. No one player will be tremendously advantaged in these categories. So, the skills arent useless, but are in fact NECCESSARY to maintain equal footing, as opposed to gaining an edge. If you took two bots, both programmed to play exactly the same way, the only factor in determining a winner would be luck. If one of the bots was programmed to play a significantly tighter starting hand selection, and all other things remained the same, the tighter bot would inevitably win, despite any luck fluctuations. The point of this analogy is that when there is a significant skill disparity, the effect of luck is minimized, whereas when opponents are equally matched, luck becomes more of a determining factor. Hence, your chances against Low Limit Lenny & Co. are far better than your chances against 6 competent opponents.

[rog 0]

Royal...you are confusing variance with win rate. Against Lenny and his 6 clones, variance will go through the roof, meaning in any given session, at any given time you may be WAY down due to luck. Statistically though, if you play enough hands, you will make a TON of money. Playing against Juanda will be the exact opposite. The variance will be lower, and your monsters will hold up, but he wont pay you off. If you play enough hands, you will slowly give ALL your money to him. This is especially true in limit, He will slowly destroy you. At no-limit, he would very quickly destroy you. Your only hope would be to fold or go all-in every hand, and hope that luck sides with you. This is so fundamental to poker that it's not funny. If you dont believe this, you are either a losing player, or you win in spite of your lack of knowledge of gambling concepts. Either way you would do yourself a big favor by reading up on these things, or at the very least, believe the hordes of well-read players here who are trying to show you the light.In the short term, poker is primarily about luck. I played 300 hands this morning, relatively correctly. It was largely uneventful, and I lost 20 BB. I never flopped better than top pair middle kicker. My stats looked like they alwsy do, and yet I lost due to bad luck. In the long term, poker is ENTIRELY about skill. Over the last 3000 hands I'm up about 150BB, or 5/100 hands. I sustain this win rate by having a skill edge over my opponents. Luck has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with it.

[Swift_Psycho 1]

Now i would much rather take a one on one agianst Juanda, rather than 7 - 1 against a bunch of bottomless money pits.I went to sleep last night before you wrote this response. Quite frankly, I'm utterly stunned that you actually said this. You'd rather play Juanda than a bunch of fish? Oh dear God. I can't even argue any more because now you are telling me you'd rather play pros than fish. How am I supposed to argue with someone who thinks beating a pro is easier than beating fish?

[dharris 0]

I think that the important thing to note here is that low-limit games can involve a lot of luck if you play like all of the other calling stations. A table full of people who just call every bet though, may as well just cut cards for pots, rather than waste time. I have played a lot of home games where people will limp in to every pot (if you let them). However, there is great opportunity to exert skill by playing your good hands and picking up big pots. A lot of times you can only play hands that you would risk your entire stack (in NL) or whatever the limit is. Let the newbies fight over all of the small pots where they beat each other with second pair calling blind or whatever. This requires a lot of patience, but that is a big part of any poker. As for high limit or professional games, luck is definitely a big factor amongst two good players on top of their game, as the skill is likely a wash. As for Juanda, get real. Most of us would need to take the stacks of all seven of the fish just to have a big enough stack to sit with Juanda for a while.

[QKRTHNU 0]

K. stop for a minute.  If we eliminate the value of money, like many players do at low limits, then we end up with a bunch of  call stations,  and a couple aggressive raisers.Now i would much rather take a one on one agianst Juanda, rather than 7 - 1 against a bunch of  bottomless money pits.  (the best starting hand in poker, loses 40% of the time). You are more susceptible to lose when your faced against 7 other callers.It is not an argument of money, or profit being made.  eliminate the 3/6 value, or the 1500/3000 value.  Lets just give a simple example that a few players are playing with their lives. Now skill vs. skill is one thing. But if you have players who are not affraid of death, then you need to be lucky to survive. And this is the case with low micro limits.Now lets say all the players  have similar skill. Yet they are all affraid of dying. Now the ability to bluff has been introduced,  and the introduction of bluffing subtracts from the luck portion of the game.

Wow. Hate to brake it to you, but...... Poker is all about the money. Decisions you make either make you money, or lose you money over the long-haul.There's this thing called MATH. You should look into it.It's easier to make money off of bad players. You will make more money the more people are willing to play all the way to the river with random cards. The games that are easier to bluff are also the ones where you're good hands won't get paid off.

[Guest Anonymous]

Smash-You should not be giving out advice since all you play are the micro limits. Probably all you can afford, but that is another topic.

[justblaze 0]

Smash-You should not be giving out advice since all you play are the micro limits.  Probably all you can afford, but that is another topic.

LOL. wait, that was a joke, right?

[Swift_Psycho 1]

Smash-You should not be giving out advice since all you play are the micro limits.  Probably all you can afford, but that is another topic.

Thank you for your contribution to the thread. :roll: P.S. If you disagree with his point of view in this specific thread, then you really need to re-evaluate your game.

[cdddc75 0]

Smash-You should not be giving out advice since all you play are the micro limits.  Probably all you can afford, but that is another topic.

Smash knows nothing about 3/6 limit poker.Good post.

[BETNFOOL 0]

Daniel, I was wondering how much of poker you think is luck? When I first started playing, I calculated it about 90% luck and 10% skill. Then, when I started playing a little more and my game improved, those numbers flipped. Now, I have it calculated at about 70% skill and 30% luck. However, playing in a home game with a diversified group of players is much different than playing in the poker circuit with seasoned pros - skill is obviously more valued. What do you think?

i think the word "LUCK" is just that, a word, used by people who don't win the pot and want something to blame it on.when i lose the pot i like to insert a "F" for the "L" and go on to the next hand