Chess and Poker

Today at work a co-worker tried to convince me that Poker is more of a game of skill than Chess. Can anyone please give me some feedback to try and convince him that chess is more of a skill game than poker is. And something beside "luck of the draw". To me, nothing decides the game beside "you". The smarter man wins. Dumb topic, but just wanted feedback from the chess community. :)

Thanks, Prodigy... (1.e4 best by test-Fischer)

Poker requires more skill at lying. That's about it. Try playing poker by dealing all the cards out face up at the beginning of the hand, and you'll see how much is true skill. None of it.

Chess, on the other hand, is played with everything out in the open for all to see -- provided they have the skill to see.

I think poker is a game of skill requiring calculations of odds and probability.  Chess seems more a game of skill of analysis not related to odds or probability.  They are both games of skill, and I do not believe you can directly compare one to the other.

Poker requires a very different skill set than chess.  Chess has a far smaller random element (how a player is feeling on a particular day etc) so its more skillful in the sense that the player who plays best always wins.

Chess uses a smaller skillset in the sense that there is no hidden information, I think the average chess player doesn't have a great story about how they got their opponent to resign from a winning position.

In poker the edges are far smaller and the goals are very different.  When I play poker I want to win money playing against the worst opposition possible making my edge as big as possible.  When I play chess I want to play someone slightly above my level so I can play a game where I can learn because I understand what's going on.

A far better comparison of games is duplicate bridge vs chess.  In duplicate bridge there is a larger luck factor but new players never win top level events.  In matches between relatively even teams the slightly better team usually prevails.  While bidding systems exist and are used, there is far less book depth in bridge, making it more accessible.

Chess is the ultimate brain game. All the information is there, you just have to analyze it.

Poker, while certainly having some brain aspects (odds calculation, pot odds, etc.) has the element of chance. There is part of the information being held from you. This makes poker the ultimate gut game. Being able to read people is crucial at the poker table.

I suspect that many of our great chess masters would be horrible poker players. Take Fischer for example. I just can't see him reading other people well. He doesn't know enough about them to do it. Plus, he seems like he would read like a book.

Actually, if poker were played all cards face up, it wouldn't make that much of a difference. Bad players would still draw with losing odds, giving good players a definite advantage in the long run. I think that playing by the odds in every hand results in much more gains than pulling off a rare bluff or seeing through someone every now and then.

Actually, when I said all the cards, I meant ALL the cards -- the whole deck, draws included.

Certainly there is "skill" in poker when it comes to knowing and playing the odds, as well as knowing how and when to lie (bluffing as well as getting another player to bet as much as possible when you actually do have the better hand.) But to compare these skills with those necessary to play chess well is ludicrous. Those who enjoy poker may try to draw  comparisons, but those are always something of a stretch.

Buy your co-worker a new car every time an amateur beats Anand at a regulation
length chess game.

Every time an amateur finishes higher than the top poker player in the world at a WSOP event have your co-worker wash and wax your car.

You will never have to buy your friend a car and your car will always be nice and
clean.

Granted, it's not played with all the cards face up. The point is, if it were, the illusion of "playing skill" disappears, or rather, is exposed as non-existant. Poker is not "playing the cards" but b.s.'ing the other players.

Both are great games of skill but there is an element of chance in poker while
chess is 100% skill.

Trying to evaluate the deterministic version of a probalistic game just because the game you play happens to be deterministic makes no sense at all.  A game of hidden information relies on the fact that there is hidden information, and much of the skill is based on working out that hidden information based on clues available (betting patterns, tells, etc).

Duplicate Bridge (especially teams) is a skill intensive game precisely because of hidden information and how much of it you can extract.

Another factor is there are more people who play poker as a full-time job than who play chess as a full-time job. So the game has at least enough skill that people can make a living out of the edges they have by playing well.

As for the whole almost never bluff idea, its very good against calling stations and people who don't observe their opponents patterns, but if you play it consistently against regular opponents it will get to the point where everytime you have a good hand you'll just win the blinds and you won't have enough good hands to cover your own blinds!

"Another factor is there are more people who play poker as a full-time job than who play chess as a full-time job. So the game has at least enough appeal that people can make a living out of the edges they have by playing well."

The reason there are more professional poker players is that more people are willing to play poker.  Jay Smith can learn poker on Monday and manage to make it to winning cash in a tourney on Friday through a basic understanding and a good bit of luck.  However, Jay Smith will definitely get slaughtered if he tries to win a chess tourney 4 days after learning the game.

Poker like chess is not all about one skill. Poker cannot be reduced to all psychology, playing the player and not the cards, or cold, calculated odds in the same way chess cannot be boiled down to overly simplistic ideas like, "It's all tactics and being able to see 20 moves ahead" or "It's all just strategy and memorization. Just memorize all the openings and that's it."

There are tactical players like Tal, strategic players like Karpov, psychological players like Fischer, and hybrid players like Kasparov.

Some poker players rely much more heavily on odds, someone like Chris Ferguson (although he does read other players well too) while other players like Phil Hellmuth pride themselves on the ability to spot tells. And there are hybrid players like Daniel Negreanu who seem to be equally good at everything.

There's more than one way to win at chess. Same with poker.

as a poker player and a chess player, i enjoy both games for the exact same reason - that is both of them are skill games against other people.

people who say poker isn't a skill game simply don't understand how poker works. yes, it is obviously true that hand to hand, there is luck in poker. even if you play perfectly, you can still lose in the short run in poker. however, there is a tremendous amount of skill required to be a winning poker player in the long run (just as in chess). if it was just based on luck, then everyone would even out in the long run, and that is obviously not the case.

as far as to the question "which game requires more skill", i'd say it's really impossible to answer such a question. if it is your contention that if there is any luck at all involved in the game then it means there's less skill, then you'd say chess requires more skill. personally, i don't agree with that definition. chess and poker both require a lot of skill to do well in, and to compare the level of skill required is pretty much impossible.

(i've been playing chess for over ten years total (with about ten years off in the middle) and i've been playing (and winning) poker for about 6 years now).

To play chess or poker at the highest levels requires tremendous skill.  But these are *different* skills.  So to say that one requires 'more' than the other is a bogus apples to oranges comparison. 

still makes no sense. playing with the cards up in poker is equivalent to playing with an engine in chess (or playing with all possible databases or something like that). as soon as you make these changes, neither game requires any skills at all.

and just for fun, anyone who thinks poker doesn't require skill, i'm more than happy to challenge you to a heads up match. 10,000 hands total. we'll see who wins ;)

If chess is 100% skill, then the best players in the world would draw every game.  The luck aspect of chess is being lucky enough to play an opponent that is not as good a player as you.

That makes no sense.

agreed. why is it that all the best players have 100% of the skills to win. is that even possible? makes no sense at all.