Do you think luck is more prevalent than skill in poker?

Is poker about luck or skill?

• I was having a conversation with my housemate about whether poker is about luck or skill. He said that it's about 70% luck to 30% skill. What do you think?

• Answer:

  Depends on the number of hands you're talking about. In the very short term it's mostly luck because there will be an imbalance of who gets what cards. In the moderately short term it's a mix. In the long run it's entirely skill because over time everyone will get the same cards and be in the same situations. The better players' better decisions in each situation will add up to a profit. There's a 0% chance of a superior player losing or of a bad player winning in the long run. (Just like there's 0% chance of the casino losing in Roulette in the long run.) No one thinks the casino gets "lucky" to win at Roulette, yet people have doubts about poker. A good poker player has an edge over her opponents, and an edge is an edge period, there's no difference between the house' edge and a good poker player's edge. You can beat the casino on any given night, just like a bad poker player can beat a better poker player on any given night, but in the long run the % edge will come to fruition. More fundamentally, the game itself is about skill because there is such a thing as good and bad decisions for each possible hand and situation. The game is also highly complex, which is why computers are still very weak at most poker variants, and why it's possible for someone to be a professional and still be quite weak compared to a more skilled professional. (If the game weren't complex, all good players would be basically equal, which isn't the case at all.) .