I don't feel like point-by-point addressing the problems with many of the statements in
this thread and it'll be clearer this way anyway.
Almost everyone believes there is more skill in tournament poker than there actually is. One of the reasons is that it's so easy to buy into the seductive fallacy that if someone achieves multiple impressive results over a period of time, it must be because of skill. When more than one person wins multiple bracelets at the 2004 WSOP, we think, wow! Those guys must be playing great, and it's nice to have confirmation that skill wins out in the end.
This line of thinking illustrates a lack of understanding regarding the manifestations of variance and the certainty of clumping among chance results. If a guy wins one tournament we have no problem chalking it up to variance. After all, somebody had to win, maybe he was just the luckiest guy that day. But somehow the minute somebody has a few good results in quick succession, it's because of skill. The fact is that out of a large population of tournament players, it is absolutely inevitable that some will turn out to be much, much luckier at critical moments than others: not just in single tournaments, but over the course of a month, a year, and even a lifetime.
When someone has a great year, people conclude that those results illustrate how good it is possible to be. BUT NOBODY IS ANYWHERE NEAR AS "GOOD" AS YOU WOULD CONCLUDE FROM THOSE RESULTS. And this is where people go off the beam.
Since I know most people still won't believe any of this, here's how we settle things gambler-style. QUANTIFY your beliefs about how good players are. Decide who you think the very best tournament players are and make specific predictions about their results. Now bet on it. It's so easy to reach the end of the WSOP, find a lot of well-known players have won bracelets, and then say "yep, it's skill!" But were those the specific well-known players you predicted, or are you fitting the data to the hypothesis? There are many more poker players you've heard of than you may realize until you attempt to make forward-looking predictions.
Here are some ideas for possible proposition bets involving verifiable predictions. There is nothing that encourages clarity of thought quite so much as having to put your money where your mouth is. Post your ideas on these subjects in this thread, I imagine it'll be revealing.
* dan harrington made the final table of the two largest fields in big buyin tournament history, on top of having won the wsop a decade prior. What are his chances of making the final table in 2005, assuming a field of 5000? Say final 10 to simplify the math. The exactly average player's chances are 1/500. What are dan's?
* I'll let you pick some number of players. If a single one of those players wins a bracelet at the 2005 WSOP, you win the bet. How many players do you need to list before you are a favorite in this bet?
* How much positive equity does the very best player have in whichever currently existing $5K+ tournament you believe has the weakest field? Ignore juice. The exactly average player gets paid back his $X buyin on average. How good is the best? 3X? 5X? 10X? 20X? More?
* Two tournament players each play 100 large field tournaments. In the end, player A has averaged a profit of 0.5 buyins/tournament and player B has averaged 1.5 buyins/tournament. With what percentage confidence can you say that player B was actually playing with higher EV than player A? Alternately: what line would you place on player B winning more than A over the next 100 tournaments as well? What if B had averaged 3 buyins per tournament?
Here is one of the great articles ever written about tournament variance, almost five years old but as relevant as ever:
Question Authority by Tom Weideman. If you have a serious interest in the subject this is required reading.
There is a risk-free fortune to be made for the industrious proposition bet seeker by exploiting the gap between perceptions and reality. Go forth and wager!