How much of poker is luck?

[bluechip270]

Does anyone know the percentage of how much luck is involved in NL Texas Holdem? For example, Brunson said a tourney is 80%Luck and 20% skill and I am just wondering what that number is for cash games?

Thanks for all the help

[ginko]

I think it's probably more like 97% luck and 3% skill.

[D.H.]

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For example, Brunson said a tourney is 80%Luck and 20% skill and I am just wondering what that number is for cash games?

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For 1 hand, 100 hands or 47 gazillion hands?

[nanoCRUSHER]

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People ask me "what percentage of poker is luck and what percentage of poker is skill?" On any single hand, it might be 99% luck. But over the course of a year, well now it's probably 90% skill and 10% luck.

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Chris Ferguson - 2005 WSOP Circuit Event, San Diego

Hope that helps.

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For 1 hand, 100 hands or 47 gazillion hands?

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For 1 hand I would say 99.99... % luck.
For 47 gazillions (sic) uhh... 99.99... % skill.
For 100 hands, I am not sure but betweeen the other two! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[BigDonkey]

98% luck. At least for the last 12k hands [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img]

[prayformojo]

Isn't this sort of question quite meaningless? Poker is in part a game of chance and in part a game of skill. Luck determines the cards that fall. In respect of who gets what cards and when they get them, the game is 100% luck. But luck will even out for everyone in the long run. No one is inherently "lucky" at poker. A winning player and a losing player will each benefit from and suffer from luck equally over a lifetime.

Skill, which in poker comes down primarily to making correct decisions with a positive expectation, is the only element of poker that creates profit over and above the long term levelling effect of luck (of course, with the rake, luck will end up considerably worse than even). Since in the long run a poker player will lose as much by being unlucky as he will win by being lucky, he is dependent entirely on skill to make a profit. In this respect, poker is 100% skill.

To use a simplified example, let's look at flipping a coin. A friend offers to flip a coin a billion times. If it comes up heads, he'll pay me $1.05. If it comes up tails, I'll pay him $1.00. The number of times it falls either heads or tails is dependent entirely on luck. No decision of mine can make heads or tails more likely. On the other hand, the profitability of my decision is in no way dependent on how the coin falls. I have used my skill (such as it is) to make an obviously correct decision and take a bet when I have the best of it. My profit depends entirely on my skill, and not on the flip of the coin. An event that is random, and therefore 100% luck, has by virtue of my decision transformed into a wager that is 100% skill.

Having said all that, I think it's much easier for limit grinders like me to view poker in this way than for people who play the occasional multi-player tournament. No one wins any tournament without getting "lucky". But I believe most would agree that long term profitability over a career of tournaments depends entirely on skill.