Skill Vs Luck In Poker
In an article on the Scientific American website, writer Jennifer Ouellette pens an intriguing look at the “skill versus luck” debate, featuring input from a few of poker’s more notable names. 2009 has seen the debate rage around the globe regarding whether poker is a game of skill or one that is dependent on the whims of luck and fortune. A writer from the Miami Herald has thoroughly depicted all sides of the debate and leaves it to his readers to determine which one they side with. Poker is 100% a game of skill in the long run. However there is a large element of luck in the short term. Professional poker players mitigate the luck aspect by consistently making mathematically superior decisions and therefore winning in the long run. In this article I am going to discuss how much luck plays a role in poker in the short run.
- Skill Vs Luck In Poker Card Game
- Skill Vs Luck In Poker Games
- Skill Vs Luck In Poker Tournament
- Skill Vs Luck In Poker
Any player worth a pair of deuces will tell you that poker is a game of skill. In the words of Lancey Howard, the unbeatable master in classic film The Cincinnati Kid, it’s all about “making the wrong move at the right time” – a snippet of wisdom he delivers after beating the Kid’s full house with a straight flush, a combination of hands with odds that have since been calculated to be in excess of 20-million-to-one.
Chris Moneymaker, winner of the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event and surely the greatest example of nominative determinism in the game, once remarked:
The beautiful thing about poker is that everybody thinks they can play.
And he’s right.
Online poker rooms, which in 2013 alone generated an estimated £2.8 billion in gross winnings globally, attract millions of beginners whose assessment of their own abilities bears little relation to reality.
Naturally, there has never been any doubt that luck plays a part. The aforementioned greenhorns wouldn’t hang around for long if it didn’t. Equally, it would be bizarre to deny that at least some measure of skill must be involved – otherwise why would some competitors win more consistently than their rivals?
Chance vs skill
But the key question is whether one element dominates the other. The reasoning is simple enough: if chance dominates skill then poker is a game of chance, and if skill dominates chance then poker is a game of skill. This is what I set out to determine in research recently published in PLOS One, with colleagues Rogier Potter van Loon at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and Martijn van den Assem at VU University Amsterdam.
Drawing on a database of 456m player-hand observations from a year’s worth of online games, we first investigated how consistent player performance was. This revealed substantial evidence of the role of skill in successful play.
For instance, players who ranked in the best-performing 10% in the first six months of the year were more than twice as likely as others to do similarly well in the next six months. And, players who finished in the best-performing 1% in the first half of the year were 12 times more likely than others to repeat the feat in the second half. Meanwhile, players who fared badly from the start continued to lose and hardly ever metamorphosed into top performers.
The point here is that performance is predictable. In a game of chance there would be no correlation in the winnings of players across successive periods, whereas there would be in a game of skill. So we know for sure that poker can’t be a game of pure chance.
The tipping point
But that still leaves the crucial question of whether skill dominates chance. To examine this we ran simulations comparing the performance of skilled and unskilled players. We found the tipping point: skilled players can expect to do better than their relatively unskilled counterparts at least three quarters of the time after 1,471 hands have been played.
In other words, poker becomes a game of skill after around 1,500 hands. To put this into perspective, most online players are likely to play 1,500 hands in 19 to 25 hours – and less than that if they play multiple tables at the same time.
Of course, devoted players everywhere might feel inclined to celebrate this revelation. They can bask in the satisfaction of knowing the game they love demands and rewards genuine proficiency and that in the end talent and guile will usually triumph over blind luck.
Legal implications
But the issue is about more than validation and bragging rights. You might well wonder why researchers are spending their time formulating equations rooted in the myriad complexities of Texas Hold ‘Em. The reason? Whether poker is viewed as a game of chance or a game of skill has potentially major legal implications.
Doubts surrounding poker’s claim to being a game of skill have shaped legislation for years. Players in the UK currently pay no tax on their winnings, which is good news for everyone from the most modest online tyro to the likes of writer and TV presenter Victoria Coren Mitchell, whose career earnings on the professional circuit exceed £1.5m.
In some countries what are perceived to be games of chance are subject to much tougher jurisdiction: in most US states, for example, online poker has been essentially illegal since the passing of the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.
All of this could change if policymakers take heed of these findings that show the opposite. Even without them, the American legal system has already argued the case several times over, with judgements upheld, overturned and upheld again. Perhaps fittingly, there’s an awful lot of money at stake and we can expect the debate to rumble on, as new evidence comes to light.
Several news sites have reported that the Ukraine has restored poker to its official Ministry of Youth and Sport list of recognized sports.
I’ll be honest, my Ukrainian language skills are not as good as they should be, so confirming this story has not been easy. The document, No. 3780 TheRegister of Recognized Sports can be found here.
It consists of a simple list with paragraph II.119 simply saying “Спортивний покер.”
Google translates that as “sports poker,” whatever that may encompass, although one source says this means “Match Poker.”
Match Poker is the game promoted by the International Federation of Match Poker (IFMP) that operates a bit like duplicate bridge. Players formed into teams play the same cards as their opponents on different tables.
This removal of the randomness resulting from dealing cards removes the element of chance leaving the winners to be decided by skill alone.
The redefinition doesn’t automatically mean that poker is not subject to the online gambling ban that has seen poker rooms such as those on the iPoker network leave the country. That will still have to be tested, but it is a strong indication that the government is softening its position.
The debate over whether poker is a game of skill or chance has raged for years, but apart from the rarefied levels of high-level legal proceedings, the truth is that it really doesn’t matter.
What matters is whether governments at state or federal level should get involved by imposing laws and regulations, and what those regulations should be.
The Ukrainian experience is typical
The Ukraine’s gambling market was essentially unregulated for over a decade after it gained its independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991. Naturally gambling flourished with every manner of unsavory characters getting involved.
In 2003, the government took the natural step and decided that tax and regulation was necessary. Law N 4204 “On Gambling Games in Ukraine” was passed permitting regulated bingo, horse racing, roulette, slots, cards and dice games.
A different government decided that gambling was wholly bad and in 2009 passed another law “On the Prohibition of Gambling Business in Ukraine,” and made pretty much everything illegal. This law got an extra kick in 2011 when internet gambling was added to the list of prohibited activities.
Behind all of this legislative activity the argument continued as to whether poker should be included in the permitted or prohibited gambling activity lists.
Until 2010, poker was generally considered to be a game of skill, a mind sport, and not classified as gambling, but then it was removed from the list of sports and became gambling again.
The federation of Ukrainian poker clubs challenged the decision in the courts and won a partial victory when in 2013 the Supreme Court determined that tournament poker should not be classified as gambling.
The US has followed the same path
The same story can be seen in the US. Perhaps the closest the US has got to taking a federal decision on whether poker is a game of skill or not came in the DiCristina case which the Supreme Court ultimately decided it would not hear.
Lawrence DiCristina was convicted under the Illegal Gambling Business Act, for running poker games at a warehouse in Staten Island, NY.
Within the flow of appeals and judgments, Judge Jack Weinstein of the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York determined that the law was “ambiguous,” and that Texas hold’em poker was a game of skill not subject to the anti-gambling law.
He still ruled that DiCristina should be prosecuted, but that’s another story. The Supreme Court’s decision to not take the decision leaves the question of whether poker is a game of skill or not untested in America’s highest court.
Underlying the whole issue is how the law and regulators should treat poker, particularly online poker. Here there are two distinct issues: Should poker be regulated and if so how?
Online poker players need regulatory protection regardless of whether it is a game of skill
Skill Vs Luck In Poker Card Game
Black Friday in April 2011 was the day when the Department of Justice (DOJ) virtually shut down the online poker industry in the US.
The disruption directly led to the collapse of Full Tilt, Absolute Poker and UltimateBet as it became apparent that their businesses had been using player funds for operational spending, and there wasn’t enough money in their accounts to refund player balances.
Thousands of players lost money, although PokerStars quickly made good the balances of non-US players when it reached an agreement with the DOJ to buy Full Tilt. US players had to wait to be reimbursed by the DOJ.
The post-Black Friday analysis made it obvious that poker operators could get away with such practices because of the lack of regulation. Black Friday exposed the weaknesses of no regulation matched with a lack of legal redress because the companies involved were often legally based offshore.
Poker needs regulation if only because poker operators hold many millions of dollars in customer accounts. US states that haven’t regulated online poker have left their citizens exposed to the risks highlighted on Black Friday.
Poker regulation can be light touch because it is a game of skill
Studies on gambling addiction show that poker, especially tournament poker is a comparatively low-risk activity.
Skill Vs Luck In Poker Games
The concept of risk-based regulation has been firmly established in EU law by the European Commission, and internationally regulators are beginning to recognize that not all the activities within their purview need the same level of oversight.
The Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) has taken this to the next step and produced regulations that distinguish between the risks that different games pose.
In introducing the new concept, the MGA consultation paper stated:
“Type I skill games are currently considered as being licensable in terms of the Act and the Regulations. Concurrently, however, the Authority is of the understanding that the risk to which a player is exposed when playing Type I skill games, as opposed to other forms of gambling-type games, is different, and in general, reduced. In this regard, the licensing and compliance requirements imposed on such operators should reflect the extent of consumer and other regulatory risk.”
The MGA went on to explain what it meant by lower risk games:
“Games which are based on a random number generator at the start of the game, such as cards or dice, but which rely on skill as the game progresses, such as is in the case of games such as belote, tarot, rummy or backgammon, should be licensed, but in such a way as to be deemed different to gambling.”
There’s a lesson here for US regulators. Regardless of legal definitions, not all activities classified as gambling are the same. A “one size fits all” set of gambling regulations is not necessarily the most appropriate response.
Skill Vs Luck In Poker Tournament
Skill versus luck has normally been seen in the context of whether or not poker is gambling. It is time to redefine the issue and recognize that its importance is in not whether to regulate, but how to regulate.