Why Online Poker is Not a Game of Chance

06:31
11 Aug

Is poker a game of skill or chance? This is a question that has been asked as long as people have played the game. The answer, of course, is that it is a fusion of both. Let’s face it, if there was no element of chance involved the bad players would lose all of their money quickly and realise how bad they are and then never come back to play.

That wouldn’t be very good for the game, would it? The losers would all be straight off to check out the top Irish casino sites rated and off to play some blackjack or slots.

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Why Is Poker a Game of Skill?

The biggest reason that poker is not a real game of chance is that it’s played against other people. The house might take a small percentage of rake, but that doesn’t interfere too much with the fact that one player is winning from another player.

If you’re a keen poker player and fed up with your friends telling you how it’s all about luck then ask them how that can be in a game of decision-making. If one player makes better quality decisions than their opponents consistently then they will win money over the long run. That really shouldn't be too hard to understand.

Poker is an elaborate mathematical puzzle that uses the cards and chips to track where the puzzle currently is. It can be proven mathematically exactly where the profit comes from.

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Fresh Strategies

One of the patterns seen in poker as it evolved over the last 30 years is how new strategies constantly come into the metagame only to quickly meet resistance as counter-strategies are found.

This back-and-forth dynamic is one of the primary reasons why poker is such an interesting game. What we see today is far from what poker was like even five years ago. The poker boom that followed Chris Moneymaker’s victory in the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event changed everything. We are fortunate that this expansion coincided with the internet undergoing it’s own change as broadband revolutionised the world wide web.

In today’s game, GTO solvers show exactly where the money is won and lost, highlighting a player’s mistakes promptly. These programs are the ultimate proof that poker is not a game of chance.

Some people will just not be told when it comes to this argument, but the points examined above prove for sure that poker is a skill game.

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Why the Luck Deception Is a Good Thing

It’s amazing just how many amateur poker players constantly moan about how bad they run. They give little thought to the fact that if bad players lost all their money quickly, then they would never return, feeling they didn’t get much value or entertainment for the investment.

This fact that poker is a fusion of luck and skill is why playing cards for money can be magical. There is no other game that lures the very worst players into thinking that they’re actually amazing but also damn unlucky.

Just to illustrate how powerful and confusing this dynamic can be, back in the golden era of online poker there was a massive sub-section of the community that was convinced that limit hold’em was unbeatable because bad players never folded. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s true.

There were bad players convinced they were poker gods and yet still losing players. And players who actually studied the game to a basic level who didn’t even understand where the profit comes from. If these guys were suddenly shown exactly how bad at the game they really are they would never play again.

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When Might Chance Override Skill?

Hopefully the reader will by now agree that poker is fundamentally a skill game that encounters a high degree of chance. So when might chance be the more powerful factor? The answer is surely when the sample size is small.

This makes sense because it’s easy to conceptualise somebody getting lucky with a couple throws of dice but the longer the run continues we expect to see good luck end at some point.

This is worth pondering for recreational players who play only live poker. At a mind-numbing average of 25 hands per hour it can take years for a casual player who only gets a few hours in at the weekend to build up a solid sample where they know if they’re a long-term winner or not.

Although live games are weaker, meaning win rates are higher and variance is reduced, this process can still take years to play out.

Finally, let’s all remember this great quote from the man who did more to popularise poker than anyone else—Chris Moneymaker, the winner of the 2003 World Series of Poker.

“The beautiful thing about poker is that everybody thinks they can play.”