is poker all luck?

Answer 1

Not if you can count cards....for the rest of us....luck and judgement

Answer 2

According to most legitimate sources Poker is a mixture of both Skill and Luck. The best answer I've seen as to the breakdown of luck/skill in poker is that on any day it is 90% luck and 10% skill, but the trick to being a good player is using that skill to affect the luck. Knowing things like starting standards, pot odds, outs remaining and such can influence your decisions about the luck portion and over time you will see that in the long run the skill is what is important. This is why you typically see the same Pros at final tables. If it was all luck then it would be completely random, and of course there are occasionally new players / amateurs at final events, but mostly they are professionals that have seen final events many times before and will many times after.

Answer 3

Common sense tells you that this cannot be true.

Poker legend Stu Ungar won the World Series of Poker main event three times.

Another poker legend Johnny Chan won the same event twice back to back and in the third year got knocked out in second place.

Ask yourself this. How could it possibly be all luck if players like this can participate in a tournament against hundreds of the best poker players in the world, and win repeatedly?

When was the last time you heard of someone winning the Powerball jackpot twice? Never.

If you follow poker on the TV you will also see the same handful of world class players on every show. In the World Poker Tour most events you see are the final six players out of several hundred players who paid at least $10,000 to enter the event. Again, if the game was pure luck what are the odds that the same old faces would keep making the final table.

Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan, Phil Hellmuth Jr., all have ten WSOP bracelets. TEN! How could they win so many against the best players in the world if it was all just luck.

When you play Hold'em, the most common form of poker these days, there are all kinds of things you can calculate in your head and all kinds of things you can learn by watching other players. You can calculate when it is appropriate to bet, and when it is not. You can learn to read tells that the other players have and exploit them. There are dozens of ways you can give yourself an edge.

If you understand the math of the game (not called card counting in poker BTW) you can calculate fairly accurately the odds of hitting a hand. You can compare this against the odds the pot is paying you and you can figure out if calling a bet is a good proposition or not.

By making few errors, making good plays and good bluffs, and by exploiting the errors of others it is possible to consistently win at poker. This is why there are hundreds of players all over the world who make a living by playing poker. When was the last time you heard of a 'slots genius' who makes a consistent living playing slots? Not going to happen, because slots are a game of pure luck with a sizable house advantage, while poker is a game of pure skill.

Now with all that said luck does play a factor. You could move all in with pocket aces, get called by deuce seven, and the flop could be three deuces (giving your opponent an unbeatable four of a kind, unless something crazy happens like you get dealt the only two remaining aces in the deck which is over 2,000-1). But if over the course of a year you play this same scenario out repeatedly, you will win the pot 87.24% of the time. So your bad luck on that one occasion will balance out over time as the mathematical probability kicks in.

Luck also plays a factor at where you get seated (in a tournament), what cards you get dealt, do you 'get lucky' at key moments in the tournament, do you get dealt the right cards at the right time etc. There are some times the best players in the world will get unlucky and be beaten by a complete amateur player. But again, over time the world class professional players will prevail.

Finally, if your experience of poker is playing nickel and dime poker at your friends house, or playing low stakes online, luck will become a very big factor. You may execute a perfect play against an amateur player in a low stakes game, and they may call you anyway just for the hell of it. Then they beat you with junk cards they should never have been playing with in the first place. But if it cost less than a dollar to see what happens some bad players just do this anyway.

So I would say that luck becomes less of a factor the more money you play for. The lower the stakes and the less experienced the players the more luck kicks in. Sometimes they will call down a winning hand when all the math is against them, and yet still catch a miracle sequence of cards to win. Under these conditions it may seem like poker is all luck.

But in any semi-serious game for reasonable stakes you will find the luck factor sharply reduces.

Answer 4

Poker is a game of skill. Sure luck is involded but the skill part of poker is doing the exact same thing in certain situations. That is how you become a great poker player.

Answer 5

Luck does factor into the game, but over the long run it is skill that will win out. In the short run luck can be 90% and skill 10%, but over the long run it's skill 80% and luck 20%. Why do you see the same players winning time after time? It is because they are skilled at the game, if you learn the right way to play you will see skill wins out over luck. You can't just keep pushing with bad hands against other players, because the percentages will get you in the end.

Answer 6

Counting cards is not going to help you in poker seeing as the cards are shuffled at the end of each hand.

Its more about knowing the odds of you winning the hand, reading body language, observational skills. I would say the balance would be 60% skill and 40% luck when playing with good players.

In fact there is a court case at the moment trying to prove this very thing, see the link to the bbc website below:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6264099.stm

Answer 7

Poker is a game of skill. Good poker players make decisions that have a good expected value (known as +EV), and bad poker players dont calculate and just play by gut. In the long run, if you make decisions that are +EV, you will be a winning player

Answer 8

There is quite a bit of skill involved in poker, which is why pro poker players are able to prosper. There's a few articles on the subject in Tips From the Pros, you can find an archive on http://www.theultimatepokerguide.com

Answer 9

Poker is 100% luck forget the long run and short term variance it's all garbage. For picking up let's say kk is pretty lucky and gives you a nice chance to win the pot. Picking up a5 suited then flopping a flush draw is fairly lucky then making the flush is even luckier. The only hand that matters is the one your playing and to win you pretty much have to rely on luck.

Answer 10

No its a game of skill and luck. The luck element is obviously down to what cards you get dealt, but the skill is about how you play those cards and the other people around the table. if you can read your opponents well, you will have an advantage over them and know when to call their bluff or not.

Answer 11

No. Any card dealt is 100% luck; skill is making proper decisions (good bet at favorable odds) based upon the known and upon the possibilities to come.