Poker, Skill or Luck? what %

S93 · Apr 24, 2008

UFCcantstopme said:
It's unbelievable how some of these pro poker players make it to final tables over and over again. That means they can not be that lucky every single tournament. They have to be doing something right, but its not always skill. I have played hands amazingly, but to be rivered on a 1 outer. So, I would believe 70% skill 30% luck.

With the one outer thing how many hands out of a 100 do u lose by a real bad beat? my guess whould be 1 maby 2 so then the luck part based on that might be 98%-2% but then you have to calculate how much the luck of what your hole cards are. Witch i whould think whould be maby 10% since even if your completely card dead you can still just sit out and try to pick up a big one and double up.

But im gonna stick with my 85%-15% even thou i think "LUCK" is only a standard for the unlucky ones.

AlexeiVronsky · Apr 24, 2008

Basically it boils down to the more hands you play the less luck there is. Tournaments are slightly different as it's basically a microcosm of your playing career. How lucky you are in a particular tournament makes a large difference, but over a lot of tournaments it's less influential. Even in a huge tournament like the wsop ME where the winner and 2nd place finisher of the tournament would be playing say approximately 2400 (assuming about 30 hands per hour for 10 hours a day for 8 days) that's a huge luck factor, anyone who's played a lot of poker knows that over that few hands luck is a large factor. When you consider the escalating blinds there are going to be a lot of times where you're going to have to take big risks and end up as an underdog and get lucky to stay competitive with the rest of the field, there's no two ways about it. There's even a paper on arxiv.org that talks about the optimal frequency for being all in during a tournament. So there's even more luck involved in tournaments than in cash games. This is because luck is a decreasing factor the more hands are dealt assuming a skill differential between players.

Speaking of which if you want proof of luck being involved, pit two identical bots playing the identical strategy against one another, it's very likely one of them will be ahead of the other over an arbitrary number of trials since it's basically a random walk problem.

zachvac · Apr 24, 2008

ALphaWolf said:
I say poker is mostly about luck, u gotta be luckyto even get a decent hand, i say its: Luck=80%
Skill=20% LOL.

sindri_93 said:
more like skils=85% Luck=15%

UFCcantstopme said:
It's unbelievable how some of these pro poker players make it to final tables over and over again. That means they can not be that lucky every single tournament. They have to be doing something right, but its not always skill. I have played hands amazingly, but to be rivered on a 1 outer. So, I would believe 70% skill 30% luck.

Until you define what a certain % luck even means such statements are worthless. What does it mean for an event to be a certain percentage luck? You cannot use numbers when you have no idea what they mean. It would be like me pointing at a tree saying "that tree is 17.4". the number has no meaning, numbers need to have meaning. Define your terms please.

AlexeiVronsky · Apr 24, 2008

Exactly the amount of luck is a variable based on the skill differential and the number of trials, without those being specifically defined you can't define how much is skill and how much is luck except in the abstract that as the number of trials approaches infinity luck approaches 0.

S93 · Apr 24, 2008

zachvac said:
Until you define what a certain % luck even means such statements are worthless. What does it mean for an event to be a certain percentage luck? You cannot use numbers when you have no idea what they mean. It would be like me pointing at a tree saying "that tree is 17.4". the number has no meaning, numbers need to have meaning. Define your terms please.

No but you could say that in your opinion that tree is 17,4 and no one could say other ways cause its YOUR opinion witch whas what the op whanted our opinion on % of luck/skill factor in poker.

BrentD22 · Apr 24, 2008

I do have to say that I am a true believer that online poker has a high% of luck vs. live poker. Online reads are tuff, live they can be tricky, but easier IMO.

I enjoy live a ton more and I'm way better live than online. I am down approx. $2000 online and I'm up approx. $2000 live so you do the math... Now I will say that I have yet to loose a big hand unless someone sucked out in a cash game (ok maybe a couple of bad hands I've played). Live cash games $1/$2 sometimes $5/$10 I have only had 3 loosing sessions amoung many break even sessions and then some win big sessions.

My poker league which is live free poker (but as good as any low limit SNG I've played at Foxwoods) I've played in a total of 28 tournaments and I've won 7, three times came in 2nd, and three times came in 3rd (we only keep track of top 3 except monthly and quarterly tournaments). So I'm ITM approx. 47% of the time (although ITM = points and gift cards).

I do have to admit that I think online I play poorly cause I can never get a good read on anyone and live I can read people really good.

zachvac · Apr 24, 2008

sindri_93 said:
No but you could say that in your opinion that tree is 17,4 and no one could say other ways cause its YOUR opinion witch whas what the op whanted our opinion on % of luck/skill factor in poker.

It's not a matter of opinion vs. fact, it's a matter of what does a % of luck/skill mean??? Say we determined that poker was 50% skill and 50% luck. What would that mean?

zachvac · Apr 24, 2008

BrentD22 said:
I do have to say that I am a true believer that online poker has a high% of luck vs. live poker. Online reads are tuff, live they can be tricky, but easier IMO.

I enjoy live a ton more and I'm way better live than online. I am down approx. $2000 online and I'm up approx. $2000 live so you do the math... Now I will say that I have yet to loose a big hand unless someone sucked out in a cash game (ok maybe a couple of bad hands I've played). Live cash games $1/$2 sometimes $5/$10 I have only had 3 loosing sessions amoung many break even sessions and then some win big sessions.

My poker league which is live free poker (but as good as any low limit SNG I've played at Foxwoods) I've played in a total of 28 tournaments and I've won 7, three times came in 2nd, and three times came in 3rd (we only keep track of top 3 except monthly and quarterly tournaments). So I'm ITM approx. 47% of the time (although ITM = points and gift cards).

I do have to admit that I think online I play poorly cause I can never get a good read on anyone and live I can read people really good.

lol at you doing bad equaling luck.

4Aces · Apr 24, 2008

all luck no skill

BG_warrior · Apr 25, 2008

sindri_93 said:
more like skils=85% Luck=15%

Dude, and how about that yesterday I lost twice with AA vs very weak hands
both allin preflop with my opponent (0.25/50 for a 50$)
Last week I had similar experience - Lost 3 times with KK (allin preflop)
- 2 times on a cashtable, and once in a freezout.

So, don't tell me it's about 15% luck.
I can tell the luck is about 60% according to my experience in poker.

WVHillbilly · Apr 25, 2008

Let's say we have KK v. our opponent's AA. AIPF. (is this unlucky?)

Flop: KAK (is this lucky?)

Turn: A (unlucky again?)

Everything above has nothing to do with luck. It will happen (albeit rarely). No magic potions or charms will change it (no luck involved).

Now if the river brings a 5th K or A and the all chips are returned, that's lucky (and most likely a Pinochle deck).

zachvac · Apr 25, 2008

BG_warrior said:
I can tell the luck is about 60% according to my experience in poker.

What does it mean for a game to have 60% luck? You're making statements (not only making them, contradicting a previous one) and not defining terms. You're trying to assign numbers to something without them having a meaning.

Do you mean that since it's 40% skill the best player in the world would win 40% of the time? (and of course you didn't specify timeframe. We all agree infinite time = 100% skill, but is this one hand? One session? One week?) Of course that makes no sense because even in a 100% luck scenario the best player would win 50%. There is a reason I'm asking this, I'd like to know what you guys mean by percentage luck. If you can define it, we can actually use PT databases to quantify it. But as long as these numbers don't actually mean anything we can't have a meaningful discussion. I think that tree over there is 65% luck btw, and the brick wall is only 29% luck.

TheseNutsWin · Apr 25, 2008

BG_warrior said:
Dude, and how about that yesterday I lost twice with AA vs very weak hands
both allin preflop with my opponent (0.25/50 for a 50$)
Last week I had similar experience - Lost 3 times with KK (allin preflop)
- 2 times on a cashtable, and once in a freezout.

So, don't tell me it's about 15% luck.
I can tell the luck is about 60% according to my experience in poker.

Did you read the articles? AA can lose many times its not a royal flush. Point is that in a long term AA wins more often then KK. its just that stuff happens. Its simple probablility stuff.

dj11 · Apr 25, 2008

zachvac said:
It's not a matter of opinion vs. fact, it's a matter of what does a % of luck/skill mean??? Say we determined that poker was 50% skill and 50% luck. What would that mean?

That would mean that if I was the most skilled I could expect to win 75% of the pots I enter. Clearly absurd.

IMO, this question can NOT be answered until the concept of luck is defined.

zachvac · Apr 25, 2008

dj11 said:
That would mean that if I was the most skilled I could expect to win 75% of the pots I enter. Clearly absurd.

IMO, this question can NOT be answered until the concept of luck is defined.

exactly. I just want a definition from people making claims. Apparently it's too much to ask.

WVHillbilly · Apr 25, 2008

16% of this post is luck.

AlexeiVronsky · Apr 25, 2008

WVHillbilly said:
16% of this post is luck.

By my calculations this thread is 44.2% skill, 55.8% luck out of 43 trials. Unless I miscounted.

WVHillbilly · Apr 25, 2008

Is it sad that I actually figured out that the word luck constituted 16% of the total characters in that post? Please don't answer that.

Monoxide · Apr 25, 2008

60% of all statistics are completely made up, 25% of the time.

iraisejj · Apr 25, 2008

70 percent skill 30 percent luck

c9h13no3 · Apr 26, 2008

combuboom said:
a billion percent skill and a billion percent luck

THATS TWO BILLIONS

[/thread]

BaddBudd · Apr 26, 2008

If your playing in a friendly home game or, low limit, bluffing is nearly meaningless as the cost of staying in a hand will have many players calling with almost anything in hope of chasing a hand and, getting lucky. However if you sit at table in a casino with a pro the average player's chances of winning over an eight hour period are zero.

odinscott · Apr 26, 2008

How is it that someone cant say that it is unlucky to lose with AA, instead it is variance? Same damn thing. You know what my variance is: my bad luck that my hand didnt hold up. Also with this variance thing, I know that it is supposed to turn around at some point, like what 500,000 hands? Is it 1,000,000 hands? Perhaps it is like 50 years? I can safely say that I have Poker Tracker stats on quite a few hands and yet has the magical variance ever to swing greatly in my favour. It does give me some hope though. Everytime I sit down, I am like yeah, even though I will get my money in with the best hand, perhaps today is the day that those hands will actually hold up, perhaps today is the day that variance will be on my side! =D

KingCurtis · Apr 26, 2008

obv none lol poker is rigged duh....

but i agree skill in the long run , luck plays a factor in the short run

mr_president21 · Apr 27, 2008

i believe poker is mostly skill untill u go all in heads up.

Poker, Skill or Luck? what %

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