[mofome]

i see the top guys losing to no names all the time, i see the top guys winning on pure luck all the time, but if there are a lot of repeat winners, there must be something to it. How much is just luck?

[Deuce]

i see the top guys losing to no names all the time, i see the top guys winning on pure luck all the time, but if there are a lot of repeat winners, there must be something to it. How much is just luck?

30% is luck. Most is skill.

[5 star bomb]

It is mostly skill. I would say 80% skill and 20% luck. Of course you can get screwed on bad beats etc but the game takes a tremendous amount of skill to perfect

[mofome]

i was watching the ws of poker last night and these guys that had written books were being knocked out in the first day by people who were nobodies. i mean that one dude who never shuts up got his clock cleaned time and time again.

[imgv94]

I think online requires more luck than live.

At least live you can see the other guy and feel them out.

[helicopter23]

30% is luck. Most is skill.

You hit it on the head. The best players can lose over long periods of times, but will win in the long run.

95% of the people who play get either lucky or unlucky 40-60% of the time. The bad beats avg. out over the long run to almost everyone.

[bettilimbroke999]

This is a very good question and the answer is very complicated the truth is that bad beats NEVER "avg. out" over the long haul as people unfamiliar with poker claim. Think about it this way you could be an absolute nobody and have a string of great cards and win the wsop like Chris Moneymaker and regardless of how poorly you played from then on you would be a positive poker player if you maintained Chris' usual couple of low buy in online tournament qualifiers. Luck in other words amounts for about 80% of your results while skill only 20%, why do you think the so called "greatest poker players in the world" never make the final table, if it were 80% skill as the people on here claim one would expect a greater percentage of them to make it through. Looking at it another way let's say you have pocket aces and I have pocket kings and we both go all in preflop in a "friendly" poker game for let's say 100 bucks a piece and I flop a king and win your 100 and you say shit you're a lucky sob and I rake the pot, now hypothetically 3 months later I'm at the final table of the wpt and have pocket aces and go all in and get called by pocket kings and he flops a king and busts me out costing me 1 million + and I say lucky sob and he wins the wpt for a million dollars, now mathematically the bad beats evened out I gave u a bad beat and he gave me the same bad beat, but IN REALITY I actually am down 999,800 dollars which is far from avg. out in my opinion, thus were I LUCKY I would have lost the 200 pot and won the million dollar pot by having the bad beats AVG OUT the opposite way. Poker in other words is an incredible percentage of luck and virtually no one outside of those being backed (thus they take a cut of winnings when they win and just tell their backer sorry when they lose) can make a consistent living playing poker unless they are just plain lucky or play players that are so much less skilled that the 20% skill factor can become a real advantage.

[mofome]

This is a very good question and the answer is very complicated the truth is that bad beats NEVER "avg. out" over the long haul as people unfamiliar with poker claim. Think about it this way you could be an absolute nobody and have a string of great cards and win the wsop like Chris Moneymaker and regardless of how poorly you played from then on you would be a positive poker player if you maintained Chris' usual couple of low buy in online tournament qualifiers. Luck in other words amounts for about 80% of your results while skill only 20%, why do you think the so called "greatest poker players in the world" never make the final table, if it were 80% skill as the people on here claim one would expect a greater percentage of them to make it through. Looking at it another way let's say you have pocket aces and I have pocket kings and we both go all in preflop in a "friendly" poker game for let's say 100 bucks a piece and I flop a king and win your 100 and you say shit you're a lucky sob and I rake the pot, now hypothetically 3 months later I'm at the final table of the wpt and have pocket aces and go all in and get called by pocket kings and he flops a king and busts me out costing me 1 million + and I say lucky sob and he wins the wpt for a million dollars, now mathematically the bad beats evened out I gave u a bad beat and he gave me the same bad beat, but IN REALITY I actually am down 999,800 dollars which is far from avg. out in my opinion, thus were I LUCKY I would have lost the 200 pot and won the million dollar pot by having the bad beats AVG OUT the opposite way. Poker in other words is an incredible percentage of luck and virtually no one outside of those being backed (thus they take a cut of winnings when they win and just tell their backer sorry when they lose) can make a consistent living playing poker unless they are just plain lucky or play players that are so much less skilled that the 20% skill factor can become a real advantage.

thats good reading. you posting more would probably be a good thing.

[SBR Lou]

Most 20 year old kids who ran up a huge bankroll online by luck-boxing in some multi-table tournament then ran hot at cash games for six months will tell you it's skill. After the poker boom, the tables were overwhelmed with kids just like this, the ones who excelled were usually college kids with tons of free time away from parties and a good mathematical mind.

Most of these kids went broke because they overestimated their abilities and variance caught up. Poker is just like sports betting except for typically much weaker opponents, it has the same need for fundamental strengths, bankroll control, game selection. The amount of luck on any given session is extremely high, over a long enough timespan your skill will factor in.

[diogee]

This is a very good question and the answer is very complicated the truth is that bad beats NEVER "avg. out" over the long haul as people unfamiliar with poker claim. Think about it this way you could be an absolute nobody and have a string of great cards and win the wsop like Chris Moneymaker and regardless of how poorly you played from then on you would be a positive poker player if you maintained Chris' usual couple of low buy in online tournament qualifiers. Luck in other words amounts for about 80% of your results while skill only 20%, why do you think the so called "greatest poker players in the world" never make the final table, if it were 80% skill as the people on here claim one would expect a greater percentage of them to make it through. Looking at it another way let's say you have pocket aces and I have pocket kings and we both go all in preflop in a "friendly" poker game for let's say 100 bucks a piece and I flop a king and win your 100 and you say shit you're a lucky sob and I rake the pot, now hypothetically 3 months later I'm at the final table of the wpt and have pocket aces and go all in and get called by pocket kings and he flops a king and busts me out costing me 1 million + and I say lucky sob and he wins the wpt for a million dollars, now mathematically the bad beats evened out I gave u a bad beat and he gave me the same bad beat, but IN REALITY I actually am down 999,800 dollars which is far from avg. out in my opinion, thus were I LUCKY I would have lost the 200 pot and won the million dollar pot by having the bad beats AVG OUT the opposite way. Poker in other words is an incredible percentage of luck and virtually no one outside of those being backed (thus they take a cut of winnings when they win and just tell their backer sorry when they lose) can make a consistent living playing poker unless they are just plain lucky or play players that are so much less skilled that the 20% skill factor can become a real advantage.

Great explanation...you nailed it bud.

[VegasDave]

Bettill got it to some degree but I don't agree 100%.

I think people put way too much emphasis on luck. If you always play good, sound poker, and know your pot odds very well, you should be fine long run.

But consider that you have A spade A diamond and your opponent has KQ both clubs preflop. Flop comes 10 heart 5 club 2 club. You both go all in...

He has a 37% chance of winning (hitting his club), you have a 63% chance of winning. If you play 10000 hands, you will win this one 6300 times and lose it 3700 times. That is the facts, you can't argue with math.

The LUCK factor comes down to WHEN you hit your 63% and when you hit your 37%. If you lose 4 out of 10 for big losses and win 6 out of 10 small wins, you obviously had bad luck.

This is why in *tournament play* luck is a large factor.

What bettill doesn't account for is that there are 100s of professional players that run the circuit and do extremely well, and it has nothing to do with luck. They are consistent, and they can overcome fluctuating "lucky" or "unlucky" streaks with good play, ESPECIALLY in cash games.

[raiders72002]

betitall is way off. It's a game of skill. You'll find pros in the final table time after time and they make up a very small percentage of the pool of poker players. Try going to Full Tilt and taking down a pro.

There are pros in sports betting that run cold because of bad beats and the chumps will win. Same thing as poker.

crazy

Most 20 year old kids who ran up a huge bankroll online by luck-boxing in some multi-table tournament then ran hot at cash games for six months will tell you it's skill. After the poker boom, the tables were overwhelmed with kids just like this, the ones who excelled were usually college kids with tons of free time away from parties and a good mathematical mind.

Most of these kids went broke because they overestimated their abilities and variance caught up. Poker is just like sports betting except for typically much weaker opponents, it has the same need for fundamental strengths, bankroll control, game selection. The amount of luck on any given session is extremely high, over a long enough timespan your skill will factor in.

good post- game of skill.

[Poker_Beast]

There is a lot of skill involved but you can't win without luck.

35% luck, 65% skill

[louisvillekid]

all of it, when you play limit Texas hold'em with 2-4 dollar blinds and every idiot at the table just keeps calling when they don't have crap.

[Oscar]

Awhile back, I copied this post from another forum (Wall Street Journal I think) because it summed up my view perfectly on this controversial subject:

"The luck of the cards, or even the luck of the memory (and poker isn't a mathematical determination analogous to blackjack; it requires an entirely different set of equations to consider. Memory isn't at the core.) doesn't begin to address the skills of the best poker players. Good players are capable of getting weaker players with better hands to fold. People play the game, not robots or computers, so a host of other psychological and emotional factors are involved.

The ability to "read" people, and surmise the corresponding strength of their hands, regardless of how it compares to your own hand even, can help players win pots. Aggressive and unpredictable play by individual players can help win pots. Dedicated poker players build on their experience, improve and refine their skills relative to other players, and ultimately win pots more often than they lose. All these factors are unrelated and undetermined by luck.

There are those instances where a poker player makes all the right decisions (from a purely mathematical and "best practices" perspective), and may still end up losing the hand based on the how the cards are ultimately dealt. It's what makes it poker. But that isn't the predominant result in the game -- and its why many professional players excel and consistently win on average in the long run.

Like any game or sport, there is a bit of chance, or luck, involved. But it's far from the driving dynamic in the game, and less than 30% of a factor for the best players."

[jjgold]

Poker is a game of chance so luck is required and lots of it to win.

[bettilimbroke999]

If it were a game of skill results would be consistent, think about it like this a poker player's skill would be "psychological" so it would be the most consistent game of all time, the top player would win 50 percent of the tournaments were it skill based b/c unlike hand-eye coordination based games he would never have an off day. The "best players in the world" are simply those that have had success, if you are a great poker player and get outdrawn you can hang out in the gutter with the chumps who push with pocket 2's. If the game was all skill chumps would not even sit down at the table at the wsop b/c Chris Moneymaker is clearly not as "skilled" as an Allen Cunningham etc., if it was all skill it would be virtually nothing but seasoned pros at the final table instead of one player I've heard of at the final 9 of the wsop each year and since I've heard of hundreds of pros that's not too impressive. If you want a game that is basically all skill we'd all be playing chess and getting our asses handed to us by the best chess players, but the reason "donk" chess players don't pay 10k to play in the world chess championship is b/c they would be gone in under an hour everytime. Give me good cards against anyone in the world and I will bury them, give me bad beats against me for 50 bucks and bad beats for me for 500 bucks and I'll rack up the chips (the reverse of which and I'll go broke), if you win 80 percent of coin flips like Greg Raymer you will be called the best of all time, if you win 20% you will be called a homeless bum if you both played exactly the same way he did to win the wsop. Also the "poker boom" has died by now when players that had no clue filled the online poker rooms trying to be the next Chris Moneymaker and would drop 2k before realizing that they suck, if you play at PokerStars nowadays check the NL averages they are so low it's sick, it's like playing a bunch of homeless bums and best cards wins the money they amassed begging for the day, anyway gl in your poker dodging bad beats and getting good cards in the "all skill" game

[jjgold]

True if the game was skill the same guys would win all the time like real skill sports, always new winners in tourneys the big ames no where to be found in most tourneys.

I watch High Stakes Poker and all it is is a bunch of compulsive gamblers taking money from each other, they just take turns to who is hot and lucky.

[Wrigley]

90% luck and 10% skill

[Finpro]

90% luck and 10% skill

finally someone who has a clue, all the dorks who posted it´s mainly a skill game just want to act cool (does this ring a bell in this forum?)

[INVEGA MAN]

You give me a high pair in the hole and you don't need any luck. You just need to know how to bet them. You need to know how to bet your cards and luck has nothing to do with a pair of aces

[bettilimbroke999]

You give me a high pair in the hole and you don't need any luck. You just need to know how to bet them. You need to know how to bet your cards and luck has nothing to do with a pair of aces

Ridiculous quote just further proves what we've been saying the person who sits in the hot seat with the hot cards (i.e. high pocket pairs/flopping sets, catching their flush/straight draws) will bury the competition regardless of who they are playing and this is PURE LUCK unless you can get a game where they simply give you a high pocket pair everytime and say enjoy our money. There is a 15-20% skill element to the game in knowing odds and how to bet the hands and sizing up players and playing them accordingly but it pales in comparison to the percentage 80-85% of the game that is pure luck. The only time skill becomes a deciding factor is when one player has such a poor playing style that it becomes obvious the proper way to play him in order to win his chips (i.e. laying in wait for a good hand against a psycho bettor (of which there are very few left online with any money in their pocket this being nearly 5 years since Moneymaker donk started the poker boom) and hoping that you get your good hand to bust him before someone else does)

[hoopster42]

some hands its 1% luck, other hands its 100% luck, but over the course of a long time, its more skill than luck, i think

[VegasDave]

To you guys saying it is all luck, do you honestly not believe in mathematics?

Do you believe that if I have AcAs and you have AhKh pre-flop, and we both go all in, I will win 87 times out of 100 and you will win 13 times?

IT ISN'T LUCK when you hit it! It is the natural order of things!

Great poker players can consistently put themselves in situations where they have a better chance of winning the pot then you do heads up.

Great players can also sense weakness in you and get you out of a pot even when their cards are weaker, and they can also sense your strength and get out of a hand when they are beat.

So what if a guy goes on a bad luck run and loses the above hand 3 out of 5 times? He will win it 85 of the next 95!

I've had some absolutely horrible luck but refuse to use it as an excuse because that is what it is; an excuse. There is no such thing as someone who is "lifetime lucky" or "lifetime unlucky" in mathematical situations because MATH WILL ALWAYS PREVAIL.

If you don't believe that, then you aren't in any position to be having this conversation.

[slacker00]

In the short run: luck is 100%, skill is 0%.

In the long run: skill is 100%, luck is 0%.

Also, skill & luck are inversely related. The bigger skill difference between two players, the less luck plays a role.

One thing about TV poker is that you're only seeing one hand or a handful of hands. Luck is the decisive factor when the sample size is small. That's one thing that makes TV poker humorous to me. It's entertainment, not education.

For a player that is skilled, you want to play as many hands as possible to remove as much variance (luck) as possible. If you are less skilled than an opponent, try to get lucky in a short span of hands, or try to avoid that opponent if possible.

But, most of this is Poker 101. The question "What percentage of poker is luck?" doesn't really have an answer. It depends on factors such as the skill level of the players in question and the number of hands being played.

[Poker_Beast]

all of it, when you play limit Texas hold'em with 2-4 dollar blinds and every idiot at the table just keeps calling when they don't have crap.

[B1GER1C828]

Bettill got it to some degree but I don't agree 100%.

I think people put way too much emphasis on luck. If you always play good, sound poker, and know your pot odds very well, you should be fine long run.

But consider that you have A spade A diamond and your opponent has KQ both clubs preflop. Flop comes 10 heart 5 club 2 club. You both go all in...

He has a 37% chance of winning (hitting his club), you have a 63% chance of winning. If you play 10000 hands, you will win this one 6300 times and lose it 3700 times. That is the facts, you can't argue with math.

The LUCK factor comes down to WHEN you hit your 63% and when you hit your 37%. If you lose 4 out of 10 for big losses and win 6 out of 10 small wins, you obviously had bad luck.

This is why in *tournament play* luck is a large factor.

What bettill doesn't account for is that there are 100s of professional players that run the circuit and do extremely well, and it has nothing to do with luck. They are consistent, and they can overcome fluctuating "lucky" or "unlucky" streaks with good play, ESPECIALLY in cash games.

ur EXPECTED 2 in 6300 and lose 2700...not necesarilly going to happen like that...

but to the great poker players-its more skill...to the weaker players-more luck

what makes a great poker player? having the skill 2 beat lucky players

[LVHerbie]

there is no way you can give a numeric anwser like this... it all depends on what you consider long term vs. short term and what type of game you play along with if you are playing tourneys or cash games.... if you're tourney player playing only 20-30 large buy in events a year exclusively I think you probably go your whole life without coming close to your expected value because the variance is going to be so huge over such a sample... On the other hand if you're multi-tabling cash games online for 40+ hours a week I would think you would have a good idea if your win rate after a few months (although it is possible that you're statistics still could be way off by a really bad or good run...)

[donjuan]

One thing is clear and that is that most of the people on this thread really don't have a clue. Poker is a game of skill. There is no x% chance and x% luck. Now if you are talking about one specific tournament, then of course luck comes into play.

[eidolon]

10/90 is probably bout right. I was going say about 16.66%skill. so lets say 10-15%.
One big way to get rid of the luck factor is being able to understand your opponent, and not doing the tournament style betting which is allin preflop and on the flop ( so yes im talking about cash games now). Being able to read your opponent and know when he is bluffing and being able to put him on the hand he has, will take away a large amount of the luck factor and bring your skill % higher. So really it depends on how you play poker, if you rely more on luck or more on skill.

[20Four7]

Poker is a game of chance so luck is required and lots of it to win.

YOu keep posting winners JJ keep it up/ I think cobra has yo down pat.

[hoopster42]

i see the top guys losing to no names all the time, i see the top guys winning on pure luck all the time, but if there are a lot of repeat winners, there must be something to it. How much is just luck?

keep in mind that the tv poker shows only give you a small percentage of the actual hands being played. and, they like to show no names beating big names because it makes for better tv and gets more people to think they can win at poker and go pro or something. there are so many more no name guys out there who play, so its amazing that even three pros can make a final table these days

[hoopster42]

why do you think the so called "greatest poker players in the world" never make the final table

it seems like every time i turn on espn's wsop coverage, there are pros at the final table. some of the pros we've heard of, others are guys who are quietly climbing in the poker world. in fields of thousands of players, the pros are finding themselves at the final table of the big and small tournaments all the time

[Bullajami]

one hand = 99% luck

one hour = 75% luck

5,000 hands = 45% luck

500,000 hands = 1% luck

[Bullajami]

all of it, when you play limit Texas hold'em with 2-4 dollar blinds and every idiot at the table just keeps calling when they don't have crap.

Sounds heavenly.