Originally Posted by
indio
Every time I see this question posed I have to chuckle. It's like asking does water boil at 212 degrees and freeze at 32 degrees? Of course poker is a game of skill, in fact, probably more than any other game there is.
You don't need another fancy study by some conglomerate, all one has to do is look at the heads up sit and go, know basic math, and have an IQ of over 75. The heads up sit and go is a match played between 2 players, head to head, where each player starts with the same amount of chips and only concludes when one player has all the other chips. This means that there are only 2 results possible for this game, either a win or a loss. There are different variants of this game but they all have only 2 possible outcomes. Now, many of us who play heads up sit and go's for a living play over 10,000 of these a year, and most who have played for years can attest to playing over 100,000 heads up sit and go's and have won around 55% of them.
Let's take a real good look at that last sentence. There are many documented players who have achieved around a 55% win rate after 100,000 games. To see the chances of this happening by random variance, let's look at the chances of coin flips, another event that has only 2 results. If I flipped a coin 100,000 times, the chances of me flipping heads 50,750 times (50.75%) is 1 in 1 million. The chances of me flipping 55,000 heads would be somewhere in the vicinity of hitting lotto 30 days in a row. It's beyond astronomical. If I typed the number, there would be so many zero's that the zero key would probably break. This is indisputable proof of the skill needed to obtain results like winning 55,000/100,000. It just cannot happen if it was luck. It's not possible. Ever.
Now let's look at the variance factor by reversing the equation. Let's look at someone who has a 55% expected chance of winning each game and see what the chances are of him not winning after a set amount of games.
1 game = 45%
10 games (5 wins or less)= 49.6%
25 games = 31.6%
50 games = 28.4%
100 games = 18.3 %
250 games = 6.4%
500 games = 1.4%
1000 games = 0.1%
2000 games = 0.0004% (1 in 250,000)
2250 games = 0.0001% (1 in 1 million)
All games have elements of chance in them, some more than you think. Even chess has some luck elements, but all games have their skill level determined by reducing the effects of variance. There are a lot of scratch golfers who can hold their own against a PGA pro for 9 holes, but have virtually no chance playing them 72 holes.
The reason poker is such a skillfull game is that it is much more than just the math, strategy, and psychology elements that are so vital to one's success.It has such a high level of variance in the short term that you can play well and lose, and lose often. This will test your emotional control, A LOT. Can you maintain a high level of play when things aren't going your way? It's hard to do, and this is where a lot of the hidden skills are vital.
As far as congress go's, they could care less if it's a skill game. When a casino owner who wants to eliminate new forms of competition gives millions of dollars to congressman for their re-election efforts, and also happens to be a Zionist who is a top AIPAC donor, those same congressman will say pretty much anything. And let's face it, most of these guys are not that bright. Sometimes it scares me to know some of them have law degrees.
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Is poker a game of chance or skill?
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