[CrisBrown]

Hi Paul,

I think most people significantly overestimate the skill difference between winners and losers, in almost every kind of sporting endeavor.

For example, consider the end-of-season scoring averages for PGA tour pros. In most years, the difference between the scoring leader and the 126th player will typically be right around two strokes per round. The scoring leader will often (although not always) be the money leader for that year. The 126th player will probably have lost his tour card and go back to Q-School.

Similarly, consider the effect of just one or two injuries on an NFL football team. With only 16 games in the season, one or two significant injuries will take the "best" team in the league out of playoff contention, because the skill difference between the "best" and "worst" teams just isn't all that great. For most of the also-rans, the difference between making and missing the playoffs comes down to five or six key plays over the course of a season: a touchdown pass dropped in this game, a blown coverage that gives up a touchdown in that one, a missed field goal here, a fourth-quarter drive-killing penalty there. The margin really is that small.

The same is true in tournament poker. While I won't go to the same extent as Tosh and say that there's no way to draw any conclusions on less than 1000 tournaments, neither do I agree with the "results speak for themselves" crowd.

Chaos and statistical theory predict a substantial clumping factor in random events. If you roll a six-sided die often enough, sooner or later you'll roll a streak of 6s. If you see only a small sample containing that streak, you might conclude that 6 is the "best" number. A poker tournament, by nature, takes a tiny sample of the players' careers. In most tournaments, the finalists will play fewer than 500 hands from start to finish. Even in this year's WSOP Main Event, I doubt that was much greater than 2000 hands. That is a tiny sample in poker.

So yes, I agree that the luck factor is significantly underrated in tournament outcomes. The good players need a bit less "luck" than the poor players, but every tournament winner will have gotten lucky to win.

Cris