poker players overestimate the skill factor in their play

Coin flips would involve skill if the probability of one outcome was known to be higher, even by a tiny amount. The skill would be very simple, calling the favored side.

Arjonius said:

Coin flips would involve skill if the probability of one outcome was known to be higher, even by a tiny amount. The skill would be very simple, calling the favored side.

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lol, I think that would be more listed as "smart" if you take the better odds and they are known...... I guess you COULD call it "skill" if someone said "you win more often with heads" and you say "then I chose heads", I dont know tho...lol


But since a coin must be weighted if it is not random, then its also cheating.....

luck is in all things....yes poker is a luck game but it takes skill to play when it's right and fold when it's wrong....and it takes luck to be here when Sue find s a sweet freeroll at intertops today at 3:29pm and is registering now....so go and guess what you got lucky today...gl in th game.

Stopped reading it when I saw the sample hands were just 60 - that is hilarious.

It wasn't 60 hands. It was 60 x 300 hands. Still a small sample but more than 60.

still, its more about the variance IMO.
Most poker players greatly underestimate it's role

deucem said:

In Prof Meyer's study, 300 poker players took part, playing 60 hands each on tables of six.
.

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Grindabod said:

It wasn't 60 hands. It was 60 x 300 hands. Still a small sample but more than 60.

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it was 300 players playing 60 hands on different tables. So, in each separate situation, 60 hands were played and evaluated.


so not 60 x 300 hands but 60 separate hands done 300 times.

Had you done the same amount of hands (60 x 300) one one table, the results would have been a different story...


DUCY?

I am not trying to say valence is not a bitch at all, cause it is..:-(

Just saying this type of report is not accurate to what we do.....

"In all-skill-but-no-luck games, Team 1 always beat Team 2, and Team 2 always beats Team 3 and so on."

This is also a flawed scenerio, because it doesn't account for people or teams having "off days" or the other team learning and improving and winning a game against the better player or team every now and then. How many times have we've seen the obviously best NFL team have an off day and lose against the inferior team that year? Even the absolute best lose from time to time.

18000 hands played by two different sample groups (experts Vs non experts)and compared. And then 3 variables of hand strength across both samples.

Of course this is different than 1.000.000 hands, but surely they must have found some significant difference in order to publish it. I'm not gonna read the paper, but I think it's too easy just to say that it was 60 hands and im not gonna read beyond that cause that makes it rubbish.

Grindabod said:

18000 hands played by two different sample groups (experts Vs non experts)and compared. And then 3 variables of hand strength across both samples.

Of course this is different than 1.000.000 hands, but surely they must have found some significant difference in order to publish it." I'm not gonna read the paper", ***but I think it's too easy just to say that it was 60 hands and im not gonna read beyond that cause that makes it rubbish.

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uhhhhhh.

you dont see why this is wrong math???

"quote" *** read the article published....

Luck. Define it. You probably can not.

In this mornings session, this happened 3 times... I fold connectors and the flop fills a straight that I did not get to play because my skills tell me not to. IN all 3 of those hands the turn and river brought either a flush or boat. Was I lucky or unlucky ????

Until I read a definition of luck that strikes a resonance for me, I refuse to be concerned with it.

I'm not worried about the 60 hands part of the study. That would be about an hour online, maybe an evenings worth live. Both would fit a common criteria that decision makers (whoa be us) might use in their distorted processes. While we ITT will know that longer term is better, most non poker players will look at things from a single instance POV, or if stretched since they are not pros, look at it as a session thing.

Our problem with this study will be in finding out how we can use it to make online poker work both for us and for fish. Those decision makers might just glom onto this study as a reason to keep online poker in the dog house. So maybe we need to encourage folks that that 6o hand sample has some merit as it does sort of represent what the average Joe would experience in his single 'session'. Play it up as an example of recreational entertainment. If we do this, we actual students of the game can benefit from a study we do not like.

From the article:

"The test of skill is whether you get the same individuals consistently doing well," he explains. "With stock-picking, different people do well every year; someone who did well one year had no advantage the next."

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So, stock traders are bigger gamblers than poker players. Someone should have told Kyl and Frist. :listen:

Its a very standard set up when you run an experiment.

I'm not saying that I agree with the article's conclusion that poker is all about luck. But I agree that in a short term or small sample scenario, luck might play a bigger role than skills and we all know this. The article does actually recocnises that the better team will win in the long run.

I think its funny how people want to just jump in and say things like luck and coin flip and put them on things and tag them with things like that .

OOPS sorry I was just looking threw the threads and because of this post I had to join and give my 2 cents worth on it . the only time Luck plays a factor in the game of good players that have done their studying and learned how to play the game for what it is , is when theres still cards to come !!!!.

If we are putting all our chips on the felt in any hand, we have no reads on a player. we are taking a chance that we might have the best hand and are not playing the game the right way it was intended for . what I call shooting from the hip and hoping . If all the cards are out the 5 community cards we now have all the information we need to know if we are ahead of the other player or players .

Going into a free for all , all in preflop that just takes away any skill any one has and goes right into luck .the main reason good poker players dont put all their chips at risk early in a tourney or when they dont have a read on a player . the good poker players strategise as well as use their reading ability to take down pots . oh wow that must be skill because luck doesnt do that for us .


ok chatted enough 2 cents worth well .05 cents worth LOL gus201

have fun at the tables

gus201 said:

the only time Luck plays a factor in the game of good players that have done their studying and learned how to play the game for what it is , is when theres still cards to come !!!!.

[...]

If all the cards are out the 5 community cards we now have all the information we need to know if we are ahead of the other player or players .

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There's still luck on which hole cards both of you get dealt. How are you going to know if your opponent is slowplaying a royal flush or has 3-high if he has just been checking all the streets?

gus201 said:

Going into a free for all , all in preflop that just takes away any skill any one has and goes right into luck .the main reason good poker players dont put all their chips at risk early in a tourney or when they dont have a read on a player

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The only reason good players don't go all-in preflop in all situations is because going all-in preflop is a suboptimal and exploitable strategy if the blinds are low, not because it removes skill factor from the game.

BTW, about that coinflips game on my earlier post, I assumed you would be able to call which side would come up at least some of the time.

I have asked the good professor to join us perhaps he will elucidate on his findings.

Hello Professor,

Your study is being discussed in this poker forum.


https://www.cardschat.com/forum/general-poker-13/poker-players-overestimate-skill-factor-in-213835/



Would you care to comment?



regards


deucem

developing the skill to read oppenents cards and know what they are holding is a skill very few have . the reason they have this skill and others dont is the understanding of how in depth the few players have put into the game to become good at poker over all ( I mean the over all picture ) . relying on poker tracker and holdem indicator to make your decisions and not getting reads at the table from what you see and enterpret from the other players playing . Knowing their styles and what you need to have to beat them is also a big part of the game .
But to say there is a luck factor no matter what I have to disagree with that I chose to put my skill first and not guess at what others have and how they will play (react )against me . yes I am not always right but nothing every is .

Lets look at math for instance . If you ask it a question it can only answer what you ask . so if you ask it a precentage question thst all you get is a percentage answer . You cant include player style and habits and how they are playing at that time . you will have to incorperate that into the percentage you ask and then decide how you will play . but most math players dont do this because of many factors . they playing too many games at 1 time, watching television , reading their emails and so on .
Oppps sorry went a stray my bad I wont put any more on LOl veered off the subject

Blinded by poker thought gus201

So gus201, consider the following situation:

$100 MTT tournament, with satellite entries... ie, some extremely bad players abound.

Your 100th hand of the tournament. You are in the BB with AA. The extremely lucky LAGfish sitting in the CO has you covered. He raises preflop 5xBB. You have seen him do this several times before and has stacked off preflop with marginal hands like KJs and AJo. You re-raise him preflop to 25xBB, everyone else folds, and he shoves. You have about 1000BB behind. Do you call?

Grindabod said:

Its a very standard set up when you run an experiment.

I'm not saying that I agree with the article's conclusion that poker is all about luck. But I agree that in a short term or small sample scenario, luck might play a bigger role than skills and we all know this. The article does actually recocnises that the better team will win in the long run.

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It's not standard at all. For one, the sample size is completely insignificant, which any competent statistician should've been able to point out from the get.

its a decision making luck.....unlike roulette for instance where you have no imput or control.....with poker the cards that are dealt are luck but its up to the player to turn that luck into a good decison or if you are a fish a bad one........it is that simple folks....life is luck

Professor Gerhard Meyer is too result oriented!!

Mortis said:

"In all-skill-but-no-luck games, Team 1 always beat Team 2, and Team 2 always beats Team 3 and so on."

This is also a flawed scenerio, because it doesn't account for people or teams having "off days" or the other team learning and improving and winning a game against the better player or team every now and then. How many times have we've seen the obviously best NFL team have an off day and lose against the inferior team that year? Even the absolute best lose from time to time.

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um b/c the NFL is not an all-skill-but-no-luck game. There's luck in the NFL... the quote makes perfect sense. An "off day" would be 'bad luck.'

mrmonkey said:

So gus201, consider the following situation:

$100 MTT tournament, with satellite entries... ie, some extremely bad players abound.

Your 100th hand of the tournament. You are in the BB with AA. The extremely lucky LAGfish sitting in the CO has you covered. He raises preflop 5xBB. You have seen him do this several times before and has stacked off preflop with marginal hands like KJs and AJo. You re-raise him preflop to 25xBB, everyone else folds, and he shoves. You have about 1000BB behind. Do you call?

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well Mr monkey I had replied to your post aaand lost it all I spent 30 minutes typing and wont retype it its gone and thats it .

But one thing I will say is is the Question you ask to be debunking me and my honesty of how I see things ? Is there an absolute right way to play it ? If so then please let us know but as I see it , It depends on so many situations and playing style and table images that you cant honestly say there is only 1 way to play that hand .

too bad I couldnt save the post it was much more suttle and had info in it too .


have a good night at the felt gus201

First of all interesting article. But it does not look like a scientific article to me. More like a popular scientific article by a journalist (Do not know about this journalist, but sadly many popular scientific articles miss out key information and so on). There is probably a proper scientific article or book out there by this professor.

Secondly, as already been stated by others, they professors main interest seem to be towards gaming addiction.

Thirdly 300 poker players playing 60 hand may or may not be adequate to do a statistical test. It all depends on what you test and precisely how you set it up. (Which is not specifically stated in this popular scientific article). [There are plenty of statistical test that can be done with a much lower number of observations. With less observations variance will go up and one will have a higher risk that they statistical test come up showing that no connection can be proven. Naturally one would like to have a higher number of observations, but that cost money. Generally I feel it is better to put money on making sure that the experiment is in an controlled environment {e.g. no/low systematical difference between groups, double blinded and so on}] Again key factors are not disclosed in the popular scientific article, not even how they people were divided into "expert" and "average". Which to me seem very relevant to know.

thank you for the article. makes interesting reading