Skill or Luck

Q: Is poker a game of skill or luck?

A: Easy answer: Poker is a game of skill.

Note that there are those who make a living playing it every day. It takes skill to be consistently a winner at anything.

Note that at the final table in every major tournament, the same dozen or so names show up again and again. Such a hierarchy of success implies skill, and skill implies that some are better at it than others. Luck creates no hierarchy of success.

Nevertheless, if you sit at any poker table long enough, you will hear the grumbling player: "My cards have gone cold. I haven't hit anything in 2 hours. My seat is bad. Boy, it would be nice to see a few good cards." This implies that a poker player only wins when he/she gets good cards. In other words, a player only wins if he/she is lucky.

Well, this may be true if you are a bad player. If you are a bad player, you need to be lucky to win. You need the right cards to fall your way.

Good players, on the other hand, win with skill. They study the other players at the table and strive to outplay them, out fox them, out think them. Sure, cards are important, but it is more important to know HOW to play those cards.

Here's another way to look at it.

Bad players pay to see cards--they are depending on lucky cards to come and help them win. They think this is what poker is all about.

More often than not, good players pay NOT to see cards. They are so much better than you that realistically the only thing that can beat them is luck--bad luck.

Thanks,

Preston