If two players of equal ability played perfect poker for an infinite amount of time, they would end up winning, and losing an equal number of times. They would end up with an equal amount of cash. A draw. They would end tied. The shorter the poker playing time, the more random variance matters. But even over a few hours of playing skill usually (but not absolutely always) trumps "luck."
Chess and Poker
Sort:
Interesting post regard chess and luck ^^
I am one who believes in saying, "Good luck," before every game, no matter how many people try to pull out that "I would say the same but there are no cards or dice in chess"-attitude.
woodshover wrote:
If two players of equal ability played perfect poker for an infinite amount of time, they would end up winning, and losing an equal number of times. They would end up with an equal amount of cash. A draw. They would end tied. The shorter the poker playing time, the more random variance matters. But even over a few hours of playing skill usually (but not absolutely always) trumps "luck."
Do I conclude from your reasoning that, on the long (infinite?) term, poker is as much of a luck-neutral game as is chess?
tonydal wrote:
woodshover wrote:
If two players of equal ability played perfect poker for an infinite amount of time, they would end up winning, and losing an equal number of times. They would end up with an equal amount of cash. A draw. They would end tied. The shorter the poker playing time, the more random variance matters. But even over a few hours of playing skill usually (but not absolutely always) trumps "luck."
Precisely. It's like the old line: "To win a hand in poker requires a little skill and a lot of luck. To win over an evening requires a little luck and a lot of skill."
But no poker player is likely to discourage you from your prejudices, rnunes...if it will make you that much more fleeceable thereby. :) And after all, if the game was solely a matter of chance, surely the IRS would not have recategorized it as a game of skill.
There may well be more luck involved in poker than in chess...but such distinctions seem to me rather trifling, in the long run. All the more impressive, I'd say, that players like Stu Ungar and Doyle Brunson were able to achieve such a level of dominance at it.
That wasn't what I said at all. Thanks for calling me out on my "prejudices", though.
tonydal wrote:
zankfrappa wrote:
Both are great games of skill but there is an element of chance in poker while
chess is 100% skill.
Afraid I don't believe that...or at least I don't believe in that definition as is generally applied. And perhaps we inevitably get into that most dreaded of all fields here (semantics), but there is a great amount of intuition in chess (which can be construed as a form of "luck")...which works fine when you are playing someone lower-rated, and founders when the player is better than you. The point being that this "skill" term is rather vague...and lord knows in my own games I have (many many more times than once) been the beneficiary of this luck. Can you really see each and every possibility on the board? Chess players love to have you believe that they can (and customarily annotate from the omniscient point of view)...but the truth is that's all a lot more hazy and subjective than that.
Yeah, even wiki says something along those lines if I remember (that chess is 100% skill with no luck or chance). But I think most players who have either played a lot of tournament chess or just a long time in general would disagree with that. Of course there's luck in chess. I couldn't count the number of times when during a game, I reach a position I was aiming for and still realize I missed something, but then continue to look and discover my position is still ok due to resources I couldn't have possibly seen 2,3,4,5 moves ago.
Basically all evaluations are subjective, and so these educated guesses are luky when they're right and unlucky when they're wrong... just like Tonydal said, no one sees everything, even in analysis. During a game we just look a few moves ahead and do the best we can with what we know. Heh, that sounds like poker actually... just do the best you can with what you know.
tonydal wrote:
OK, but you're still sounding like I used to before I ever played any poker. Try it and you'll see...it's not nearly so simple. You can start out with "the advantage" (2 aces say) and end up losing that, just to name one example.
Hmm, is that directed at me? I was (trying) to agree with you :) although I admit I haven't played any serious poker. I've played "friendly" games but I know the difference between them and players who "play for blood."
tonydal wrote:
OK, but you're still sounding like I used to before I ever played any poker. Try it and you'll see...it's not nearly so simple. You can start out with "the advantage" (2 aces say) and end up losing that, just to name one example.
From your example I think we are in agreement. Give a look at my post #43, if you care, there you have the argument in which I base my view. I believe it covers the possibility of a unskilled player losing with a good hand despite of the underlying luck factor on poker.
One problem I have with the "in the long term luck is neutralized" argument is how well it seems to fit in the Gambler's Fallacy.
It is indeed a fact that if you play an infinite amount of games, chances are that distribution of cards will eventually equally benefit all players. The thing is that for every new game chances are calculated from zero, not from the luck you had on previous games. If you had bad hands on the last 999 games, it doesn't mean that you will have better chances for a good hand on the 1000th game just to make up for the statistics. Chances of getting a bad hand are exactly the same from the 1st game.
rnunesmagalhaes wrote:
One problem I have with the "in the long term luck is neutralized" argument is how well it seems to fit in the Gambler's Fallacy.
It is indeed a fact that if you play an infinite amount of games, chances are that distribution of cards will eventually equally benefit all players. The thing is that for every new game chances are calculated from zero, not from the luck you had on previous games. If you had bad hands on the last 999 games, it doesn't mean that you will have better chances for a good hand on the 1000th game just to make up for the statistics. Chances of getting a bad hand are exactly the same from the 1st game.
Anybody with half a brain knows that, for cryen out loud!!!!!!! The point I'm trying to make is that nobody can say they always lose because of bad "luck." Skill trumps luck because if how you play the hand you're dealt. Also nobody always wins because they're "lucky." I thought I made that point perfectly clear.
rnunesmagalhaes wrote:
One problem I have with the "in the long term luck is neutralized" argument is how well it seems to fit in the Gambler's Fallacy.
It is indeed a fact that if you play an infinite amount of games, chances are that distribution of cards will eventually equally benefit all players. The thing is that for every new game chances are calculated from zero, not from the luck you had on previous games. If you had bad hands on the last 999 games, it doesn't mean that you will have better chances for a good hand on the 1000th game just to make up for the statistics. Chances of getting a bad hand are exactly the same from the 1st game.
Well sure -- just like if when flipping a coin it lands heads up 999 times the next flip is still 50/50 , yet how often can you flip 999 consecutive heads. In poker I'm sure it's the same way, not mathematically speaking, but in practice, if you play a few hours the skill outweighs the luck... at least that's what the experienced players seem to be saying, I don't know myself :).
Not that there isn't luck involved, such as some "amateur" winning the world series of poker... although I wonder how much that amateur has played online and otherwise. Anyway without focusing on this clearly unusual circumstance, it seems like in practice there is a certain length of play where skill outweighs luck, which is what I'd direct at your post 43 no matter how much the argument seems to fit into the gambler's fallacy to you. And not completely tongue-in-cheek either, as I don't think the IRS's evaluation of poker was so easy to dismiss.
woodshover wrote:
rnunesmagalhaes wrote:
One problem I have with the "in the long term luck is neutralized" argument is how well it seems to fit in the Gambler's Fallacy.
It is indeed a fact that if you play an infinite amount of games, chances are that distribution of cards will eventually equally benefit all players. The thing is that for every new game chances are calculated from zero, not from the luck you had on previous games. If you had bad hands on the last 999 games, it doesn't mean that you will have better chances for a good hand on the 1000th game just to make up for the statistics. Chances of getting a bad hand are exactly the same from the 1st game.
Anybody with half a brain knows that, for cryen out loud!!!!!!! The point I'm trying to make is that nobody can say they always lose because of bad "luck." Skill trumps luck because if how you play the hand you're dealt. Also nobody always wins because they're "lucky." I thought I made that point perfectly clear.
Don't ever let people with less than half a brain waste your valuable time on the internet.
orangehonda wrote:
rnunesmagalhaes wrote:
One problem I have with the "in the long term luck is neutralized" argument is how well it seems to fit in the Gambler's Fallacy.
It is indeed a fact that if you play an infinite amount of games, chances are that distribution of cards will eventually equally benefit all players. The thing is that for every new game chances are calculated from zero, not from the luck you had on previous games. If you had bad hands on the last 999 games, it doesn't mean that you will have better chances for a good hand on the 1000th game just to make up for the statistics. Chances of getting a bad hand are exactly the same from the 1st game.
Well sure -- just like if when flipping a coin it lands heads up 999 times the next flip is still 50/50 , yet how often can you flip 999 consecutive heads. In poker I'm sure it's the same way, not mathematically speaking, but in practice, if you play a few hours the skill outweighs the luck... at least that's what the experienced players seem to be saying, I don't know myself :).
Not that there isn't luck involved, such as some "amateur" winning the world series of poker... although I wonder how much that amateur has played online and otherwise. Anyway without focusing on this clearly unusual circumstance, it seems like in practice there is a certain length of play where skill outweighs luck, which is what I'd direct at your post 43 no matter how much the argument seems to fit into the gambler's fallacy to you. And not completely tongue-in-cheek either, as I don't think the IRS's evaluation of poker was so easy to dismiss.
Thanks, orangehonda.
I think we have come to an agreement that, for a good player, skill overweighs luck in poker. That's what I meant by saying on #43 that a skilled player is one who can overcome a bad hand. The question now seems to be if, in the long term, two equally skilled players would draw (i.e., their hands would eventually even up at a certain point in time) or if one of them would eventually win because he had better cards (i.e., the distribution of good and bad hands wouldn't necessarily be even on the long term -- hence my reference to the Gambler's Fallacy);
Edit: I tend to believe in the second alternative, if that wasn't clear enough 
rnunesmagalhaes wrote:
orangehonda wrote:
rnunesmagalhaes wrote:
One problem I have with the "in the long term luck is neutralized" argument is how well it seems to fit in the Gambler's Fallacy.
It is indeed a fact that if you play an infinite amount of games, chances are that distribution of cards will eventually equally benefit all players. The thing is that for every new game chances are calculated from zero, not from the luck you had on previous games. If you had bad hands on the last 999 games, it doesn't mean that you will have better chances for a good hand on the 1000th game just to make up for the statistics. Chances of getting a bad hand are exactly the same from the 1st game.
Well sure -- just like if when flipping a coin it lands heads up 999 times the next flip is still 50/50 , yet how often can you flip 999 consecutive heads. In poker I'm sure it's the same way, not mathematically speaking, but in practice, if you play a few hours the skill outweighs the luck... at least that's what the experienced players seem to be saying, I don't know myself :).
Not that there isn't luck involved, such as some "amateur" winning the world series of poker... although I wonder how much that amateur has played online and otherwise. Anyway without focusing on this clearly unusual circumstance, it seems like in practice there is a certain length of play where skill outweighs luck, which is what I'd direct at your post 43 no matter how much the argument seems to fit into the gambler's fallacy to you. And not completely tongue-in-cheek either, as I don't think the IRS's evaluation of poker was so easy to dismiss.
Thanks, orangehonda.
I think we have come to an agreement that, for a good player, skill overweighs luck in poker. That's what I meant by saying on #43 that a skilled player is one who can overcome a bad hand. The question now seems to be if, in the long term, two equally skilled players would draw (i.e., their hands would eventually even up at a certain point in time) or if one of them would eventually win because he had better cards (i.e., the distribution of good and bad hands wouldn't necessarily be even on the long term -- hence my reference to the Gambler's Fallacy);
Edit: I tend to believe in the second alternative, if that wasn't clear enough
Sheesh!!!!!!!
rnunesmagalhaes wrote:
brianb42 wrote:
Convincing your opponent that a planned sacrifice is a blunder could be considered the equivelent of a bluff in poker. You have to sell the idea that you made a mistake without being over dramatic. There is also the luck of your opponent not seeing your entire plan. Perhaps he loses the exchange because he over looked a third piece guarding a square. It's lucky for you and unlucky for him. I would say poker relies more on the intuition of knowing which hand to play and which hand to fold.
This is related to skill, not to luck.
That is my point. I play Texas hold 'em and chess. They both require a lot of skill and a little luck. The draw of the cards is random. How you play them is not. Misdirection of your true intentions is important in both games.
The distribution of hands wouldn't necessarily be exactly even in the short term, but the fact that nobody can count on random variance favoring them all the time, negates that. As I stated, the longer you play, the more random variation evens out. Hence, the need to acquire skill. Skill is how you play the hands you're dealt.
tonydal wrote:
There are a few things I wanted to add (and I am actually typing this in the middle of a poker tournament! lol)...
First off, the notion that good players will be saddled with bad hands is negated by the possibility of folding those bad hands. Thus, all players can indeed start play with (roughly) hands of the same value.
I tend to liken poker to a game of kriegspiel. There is still a great amount of skill involved (as witness the matchup between Charles Goren and Irving Chernev, which ended up about equal; despite Chernev's much greater prowess in chess, Goren was a much more able cardplayer), but they are different skills. Which leads me to another point: the skills in poker might not be considered skills in the chess sense, but skills indeed they are: those of reading your opponent and developing some sort of intuition about what is going on and the danger signals (I wonder if that's really so different from positional intuition in chess?).
But the problem I really have with all this business is the typical snobbish chessplayer attitude implied by it. Even if poker is more a game of chance than chess is, does that really make it less of a game? After all, very few people (not named Tiger) ever win several golf tournaments in a row...does that make golf a chancy endeavor and not respectable as a pastime?
That's a good point. I believe that most people here avoided this attitude. From the point of view of someone who thinks that chess is less dependent on luck than poker, I'd answer: no. The entertainment value of different games shouldn't even be compared.
BUT
What I would draw from this discussion is that, having fewer starting imbalances, the result of a chess game tells more about the skills (and the lack of it) of the players involved on a match then it does on poker. There's zero chance that I will ever beat a GM (or a NM) no matter how much I play chess everyday, but the equivalent situation can happen in poker.
rnunesmagalhaes wrote:
orangehonda wrote:
rnunesmagalhaes wrote:
One problem I have with the "in the long term luck is neutralized" argument is how well it seems to fit in the Gambler's Fallacy.
It is indeed a fact that if you play an infinite amount of games, chances are that distribution of cards will eventually equally benefit all players. The thing is that for every new game chances are calculated from zero, not from the luck you had on previous games. If you had bad hands on the last 999 games, it doesn't mean that you will have better chances for a good hand on the 1000th game just to make up for the statistics. Chances of getting a bad hand are exactly the same from the 1st game.
Well sure -- just like if when flipping a coin it lands heads up 999 times the next flip is still 50/50 , yet how often can you flip 999 consecutive heads. In poker I'm sure it's the same way, not mathematically speaking, but in practice, if you play a few hours the skill outweighs the luck... at least that's what the experienced players seem to be saying, I don't know myself :).
Not that there isn't luck involved, such as some "amateur" winning the world series of poker... although I wonder how much that amateur has played online and otherwise. Anyway without focusing on this clearly unusual circumstance, it seems like in practice there is a certain length of play where skill outweighs luck, which is what I'd direct at your post 43 no matter how much the argument seems to fit into the gambler's fallacy to you. And not completely tongue-in-cheek either, as I don't think the IRS's evaluation of poker was so easy to dismiss.
Thanks, orangehonda.
I think we have come to an agreement that, for a good player, skill overweighs luck in poker. That's what I meant by saying on #43 that a skilled player is one who can overcome a bad hand. The question now seems to be if, in the long term, two equally skilled players would draw (i.e., their hands would eventually even up at a certain point in time) or if one of them would eventually win because he had better cards (i.e., the distribution of good and bad hands wouldn't necessarily be even on the long term -- hence my reference to the Gambler's Fallacy);
Edit: I tend to believe in the second alternative, if that wasn't clear enough
Oops 
ok.
Well to weigh in on that then, if skill were equal and luck weren't then I'd have to say it wouldn't end in a draw if the game involved a sufficient amount of luck. I think poker would be such a game. Also, because I think poker would involve more luck than chess, the instances of a decisive end between equally skilled players as well as an upset between players of different skill would occur more frequently in poker than in chess.
Not that I disagree with Tonydal's post 70 -- I'm sure poker involves a lot of skill and comparing chess to poker is, as a much earlier post suggested, like comparing apples to oranges. I guess Tonydals main gripe is the elitist attitude of some chess players -- I'm sure we all basically agree there is both skill and luck in poker, and that it's mostly reading into each other's attitudes about how highly or lowly poker or chess should be regarded fuels the debate on.
Comparing chess and go would make more sense...
brianb42 wrote:
rnunesmagalhaes wrote:
brianb42 wrote:
Convincing your opponent that a planned sacrifice is a blunder could be considered the equivelent of a bluff in poker. You have to sell the idea that you made a mistake without being over dramatic. There is also the luck of your opponent not seeing your entire plan. Perhaps he loses the exchange because he over looked a third piece guarding a square. It's lucky for you and unlucky for him. I would say poker relies more on the intuition of knowing which hand to play and which hand to fold.
This is related to skill, not to luck.
That is my point. I play Texas hold 'em and chess. They both require a lot of skill and a little luck. The draw of the cards is random. How you play them is not. Misdirection of your true intentions is important in both games.
I was mostly addressing the boldened part of your post. I consider that if your opponent overlooked a tactical play, this should be accountet to his lack of skill, not to his lack of luck.
(...) But if you always played poker flawlessly, you couldn't help but win over the long haul (...)
If two poker players play flawlessly, the one with the best set of random cards would win, no? That was my point: in poker, skill is subordinate to a random imbalance that you have either to overcome (in case you have bad cards) or to secure (in case you have good ones).
In chess skill isn't subordinate to such structure, sice the "cards" are all the same for both players. Players start on the same level (again, assuming that the first-move advantage is not decisive, as it appears to be the case) and the result of the game only depends on differences of skill, not on differences of starting position.