poker players overestimate the skill factor in their play

FastOne · Sep 10, 2012

deucem said:
In Prof Meyer's study, 300 poker players took part, playing 60 hands each on tables of six. They were divided into "expert" and "average" players, and their ability to make money from good, bad and average hands was assessed. It turned out that - as you might expect - "expert" players lost less money on bad hands; but surprisingly, they did no better than average players on mediocre hands and even made slightly less on good ones. The conclusion, says Meyer, is that "poker players overestimate the skill factor in their play".

60 hands!?!? Really? That's a very small amount ofhands to prove anything IMO.

And then, it says: "It turned out that - as you might expect - "expert" players lost less money on bad hands"... Am I missing something?

ovitoo · Sep 10, 2012

Moral of the entire thread:
A good player has no concern for luck. It's never about luck imo it's about not being 'unlucky'. At no point in a hand do I think "Maybe I'll get lucky." That's for bad players to do.

And I'm not gonna re-read to find who said it but someone was saying you have to be lucky in flips. Completely false. The point of a flip is that you and whoever have the exact same chance. Overall you will win half the time. You don't have to be "lucky" you just have to be present.

Coffee · Sep 10, 2012

FastOne said:
60 hands!?!? Really? That's a very small amount ofhands to prove anything IMO.

And then, it says: "It turned out that - as you might expect - "expert" players lost less money on bad hands"... Am I missing something?

Clearly all the information about the experiment is not disclosed in that popular scientific article.

I would guess they have compared two groups of people against each other, the specifics is missing. But maybe two groups of 150 people each, with 60 observation on each person. If so there could very well be sufficient data to get some statistical significant results.

One should probably look at it as a psychological experiment, not bankroll statistics or suchlike

The really bad part about the popular scientific article is that it do not give proper reference to where the full text is.

Just "a study released this month (August)" and "Professor Gerhard Meyer, of the University of Bremen's Institute of Psychology and Cognition Research".

Would have been relevant to know where the study was released. There own campus student paper or a international peer reviewed journal?

Grindabod · Sep 10, 2012

^^ good points

KoRnholio · Sep 11, 2012

I agree with the conclusion that in the short run, there is a very high element of luck in poker.

Didn't read the article, but having done some psychology lab work during my time in university as an undergrad, those 60 hands were surely designed specifically for their experiment and played on computer terminals. 60 random hands is a drop in the bucket of course. But when you specifically set up hands to get a good cross section of the various skills in poker (which hands to play, bet sizing, hand reading, etc) I think 60 is probably plenty.

c double · Sep 12, 2012

I didnt know there were 3 sixes of clubs in the deck

pokeyourface · Sep 19, 2012

I think i do this as well. In a game like poker where even a good call all in pre usually has you at 75 / 25 %. 25% is actually a big chance for an underdog to win. I have to learn that. Just gotta realize you will be pofitable "in the long run" as they say

STL420 · Sep 28, 2012

RE Skill

When observing poker the first thing that comes to mind is, poker is a sum zero game and people make decisions based on mis-information. This makes poker an abstract game. To make a concrete decision based upon this a person needs skill and how do we acquire this? Experience from playing hours and hours of practice either on line or live. People who think luck is just as important than skill are gambling on the abstract instead of trusting their reads at any given table and situation.

If we put ourselves in situations against people with less skill and can take their chips based on observation on a leak in their game and do this over and over is this luck or skill? The more experience we have the quicker we can observe a leak in any persons game and luck has nothing to do with the outcome of this.

Even though, we are trusting our reads and get our opponents to put their chips in behind there is still no guarantee we are going to win. If we are all in pre-flop with an opponent then the skill and playing poker is over, then it is up to the cards that come out and what happens was supposed to happen.

Peoples free will to think however, is what makes this a good topic of discussion and there is no real right or wrong answer. I embrace the gambler or an opponent who thinks luck is just as important as skill because these are the people we get our chips from. If we get sucked out on because they get lucky so be it. I personally say no to luck because that is for others to have and if they choose to use the word luck then it is their own free will to have that approach.

waz666 · Sep 28, 2012

Are you trying to tell me I'm not the greatest ever

4thandinches · Sep 28, 2012

Almost ALL gamblers when starting out (I was no exception) are ignorant and have an inflated ego and naive perception of their actual abilities. As time wears on, you either realize you have not re-invented the wheel and are not the next big thing, or you become a delusional broke degenerate who is giving others advice on how to make money.

ovitoo · Sep 28, 2012

If there is no skill involved, I'm glad to be a part of a community with some of the luckiest players in poker

gus201 · Sep 28, 2012

Ok How do we distingquish between Luck and skill ? Is there luck in a coin fllip?
and does the coin flip even out in the long run ?

If I was able to flip the coin all 100 times I could guess the out come 99% of the time . If it was random then it would be 50 /50 in the long term .

Why would I say a stupid thing like that ? could it be that I can call all the flips and be accurate ? maybe I have a way to flip the coin so it lands the same all the time . HMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!

How can we use this in a poker sense ? Could there be a way to get the skill we need to be more in depth in poker too have the skill to be more advanced in our poker mind set , reading skills that would not only help us , but to gain better understanding of how we should play our opponents. Do we have any guide lines to know how we should play each player and their style of play ?

Just a thought

gus201

deeshark420 · Sep 28, 2012

on skills id stick with those

On skills you say yours told you not to call those hands and we all sit back when we fold and see wow glad i went with my gut on that or yeah glad my skills paid off.
I have been so fiery mad at myself lately because ive second guessed quite a bit lately and put myself in the situations i found myself in.I took sites off and find myself redownloading them a few days later.It seems when im deep in a tournament thats when my badluck creeps in and on good hands really have to play different even with the better cards and im finding that out the hard way.goodluck out there and my opinion is skill always outways luck in the long run.

dj11 · Sep 29, 2012

gus201 said:
Ok How do we distingquish between Luck and skill ?/quote]

This has always been my dilemma, we can't even define luck.

Are we lucky or unlucky when we fold 44 preflop and see a 4 on the flop, but the board flushes and a flush wins the hand?

wagon596 · Sep 29, 2012

. How many times have I received a "Bad Beat" and said to myself, I shouldn't have been in the hand to begin with. I have to be more patient waiting on good starting hands. For myself I accept the responsibility of my bad play. Not always but I try to. It's the only way I'll learn to try and not make the same mistake over and over.

gus201 · Sep 29, 2012

dj11 said:
This has always been my dilemma, we can't even define luck.

Are we lucky or unlucky when we fold 44 preflop and see a 4 on the flop, but the board flushes and a flush wins the hand?

So very true. What we need to do is look at the situation from beginning to end to determine if we played the hand and our opponents correctly . was it raised perflop , what position were you in ? ect..... now trun this around and ask the same questions about the other guy . was he trying to buy the blinds or steal the hand . we need to know this before we can make any sense of it . Moat players look at the end result ( the other players cards ) and then make statements and over look some of the facts .

deucem · Sep 30, 2012

gus201 said:
So very true. What we need to do is look at the situation from beginning to end to determine if we played the hand and our opponents correctly . was it raised perflop , what position were you in ? ect..... now trun this around and ask the same questions about the other guy . was he trying to buy the blinds or steal the hand . we need to know this before we can make any sense of it . Moat players look at the end result ( the other players cards ) and then make statements and over look some of the facts .

I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

:trytofly: :trytofly: :trytofly: :trytofly: :trytofly: :trytofly: :trytofly: :trytofly: :trytofly: :trytofly:

dj11 · Sep 30, 2012

Since we can not define luck, but we all seem to have a working grasp of what it is, then there seems to be some things we can do.

We can understand that the average winning hand in NLH is less than a pair and a half.
We can understand that the odds we learn are never immutable. We can make decisions to play certain opportunities sometimes and not others. We can learn to recognize opportunities and capitalize on them.

We can learn that luck factor exists, and in general over time it will even out, thus giving credence to the fact that skill will win the day.

fletchdad · Oct 1, 2012

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?

I am surprised no one has commented on this. I would be eager to see what people do here.

1000BB behind and he has us covered...wow. How many entrants? Bubble must be still a long ways away. (We must be running like Jesus to have 1000BB after 100 hands).

We have 83-86% equity depending on his range, we are so far ahead that I guess calling is hard to resist. I know that there is a thought process that would go "If I call and lose, I lose the chance to exploit the other bad players" But I dont see letting and 80+% chance go of doubling up here something I could do. I am also not the strongest MTT player, so the extra chips would make my chance to FT so much bigger that I could not NOT call. A very good player might chose to fold, if most players have stacks in the 100-200 range, simply cause his edge is so great vs the entire player pool, that he may not want to give that edge up so early, even as a better than 4:1 fave, IDK.

Poker Orifice · Oct 1, 2012

fletchdad said:
I am surprised no one has commented on this. I would be eager to see what people do here.

1000BB behind and he has us covered...wow. How many entrants? Bubble must be still a long ways away. (We must be running like Jesus to have 1000BB after 100 hands).

We have 83-86% equity depending on his range, we are so far ahead that I guess calling is hard to resist. I know that there is a thought process that would go "If I call and lose, I lose the chance to exploit the other bad players" But I dont see letting and 80+% chance go of doubling up here something I could do. I am also not the strongest MTT player, so the extra chips would make my chance to FT so much bigger that I could not NOT call. A very good player might chose to fold, if most players have stacks in the 100-200 range, simply cause his edge is so great vs the entire player pool, that he may not want to give that edge up so early, even as a better than 4:1 fave, IDK.

Bud. Don't worry. You really don't need to spend so much time thinking this one through

(I don't have to explain do I? .... of course 'you' are calling here

) Hi Jay!

... gus201

Put that ^ on the end cuz I thought it looked cool

fletchdad · Oct 1, 2012

Poker Orifice said:
Bud. Don't worry. You really don't need to spend so much time thinking this one through But what else am I going to spend my time doing????
(I don't have to explain do I? .... of course 'you' are calling here I am actually wondering who isnt???lol ) Hi Jay!

... gus201

Put that ^ on the end cuz I thought it looked cool

Hey back at ya!

Poker Orifice · Oct 1, 2012

fletchdad said:
Hey back at ya!

dan abnormal · Oct 2, 2012

you do know threads like this cut rights to the heart of is it a game of skill or a game of luck, if aint labeled a game of skill then it seems to fall into the problems but right now i forget what they are

Coffee · Oct 2, 2012

For me it cuts right to human nature (which indirectly affects poker).

Some popular scientific books on similar subjects, better written then that article.

Dan Ariely - Predictably Irrational: The hidden forces that shape our decisions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational

Christopher Chabris & Daniel Simons - The Invisible Gorilla: How our intuitions deceive us
http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/index.html

4thandinches · Oct 2, 2012

dan abnormal said:
you do know threads like this cut rights to the heart of is it a game of skill or a game of luck, if aint labeled a game of skill then it seems to fall into the problems but right now i forget what they are

I would say poker is 80% luck and 20% skill. but that 20% is crucial. And the better question to ask yourself would be, "what knowledge and skills makes me so much better than the other people at my table?" The answer is usually little to nothing.
The problem with poker is not that big mistakes will invariably wipe you out. The problem lies wherein you consistently make solid decisions, yet are still going broke in the process.

poker players overestimate the skill factor in their play

FastOne

Legend

ovitoo

Legend

Coffee

Rock Star

Grindabod

Rock Star

KoRnholio

Visionary

c double

Enthusiast

pokeyourface

Rising Star

STL420

Rising Star

waz666

Rock Star

4thandinches

Enthusiast

ovitoo

Legend

gus201

Rock Star

deeshark420

Rock Star

dj11

Legend

wagon596

Legend

gus201

Rock Star

deucem

Rock Star

dj11

Legend

fletchdad

Legend

Poker Orifice

And Still...

fletchdad

Legend

Poker Orifice

And Still...

dan abnormal

Legend

Coffee

Rock Star

4thandinches

Enthusiast

About CardsChat

Our Community

Our Site