Poker, Skill or Chance?
a game of skill or chance?Is poker a game of skill or chance? Some will say that it depends on who you ask, but actually it’s much simpler – it is primarily a game of skill, with elements of chance. While opinions may vary, the statistics tell the truth of the matter, with the vast majority of hands not going to showdown, and the person with the best hand only occasionally coming out on top.
More skilled players have more success than unskilled “lucky” players in the long run. Just ask Doyle Brunson, who has made a career out of playing poker for more than 50 years. He has won many poker accolades over that time, including two WSOP Main Event wins in a row, and these achievements were due to his skill in poker, not dumb luck.
It really should be self-evident that success in poker is more a product of skill than chance. How is it that a casino makes money from table games? The games of chance there are unequal, giving the casino a slight edge over time. Sometimes the players get lucky, but they have a negative expected value in the long run. The aspect of chance in poker is essentially equal for all players, or at least as close as possible. As the rules are simple, one would expect that all players would come out close to even over time. That isn’t the case at all, however, as the top players have a positive expected value that earns them millions of dollars per year, consistently over their careers.
Poker is primarily a game of skill. Only bad players and the uninformed think it is predominantly a game of chance. You can be sure that the players at the top are glad that ignorant people keep contributing money to the poker community while having no clue about the real complexities of the game. However, those who simply oppose poker based on the grounds that it is a game of chance need to learn how the game is really played by professionals or just stay away from the issue entirely. Really, if poker were a game of chance, why would so many players benefit from things like the Full Tilt Academy, which teaches Full Tilt Poker players how to improve their poker game?
