Looking for an appropriate challenge to those who say poker's all luck

[mikehildebrand]

Read the book "The Professor, the Banker and the Suicide King" and tell me if you stand by your post. Not flaming you, but it has opened my eyes.

[intheflatfield]

This is not a Democrat / Neocon? (So everyone that's not a democrat is a NeoCon?)issue or a Liberal / Conservative one for that matter.

[bobman0330]

In what way is poker less a game of chance than blackjack?? Just because one player can have a consistent edge doesn't change the nature of the game. The house has an edge in craps, roulette, and blackjack. You (and the house) have an edge in poker. However, the results of every hand are determined by chance.

I am also from Ohio and would like to see gambling legalized here. I know that when they made it legal in California to play flop games ( previously only draw was legal) their arguement was that it was a game of skill and they obviously won. I'm no lawyer but I guess there must be some ruling about this published somewhere.

[NYCNative]

[ QUOTE ]
This is not a Democrat / Neocon? (So everyone that's not a democrat is a NeoCon?)issue or a Liberal / Conservative one for that matter.

[/ QUOTE ]In Ohio it is.

[Miles Ahead]

You're not saying Andy Beal is or played like a moron are you?

That's certainly not what I took away from the book.

[johnc]

Poker and blackjack are games of chance with luck factoring in massively into outcomes. Now, skilled poker and blackjack players use their knowledge and talents to take advantage of the odds being in their favor and avoid situations where the odds are against them. Still, luck plays into it but that's really a moot point here.

In California (outside of Indian casinos and the lottery), casions offer no games which the players gamble against the house. The casinos provide the fair and safe environment for these gambling activities (poker and blackjack) to take place (for a healthy fee of course!). This setup more or less provides for gambling with less of stigma of "big casino fleecing the poor gambler" image that prevails in LV (BS, I know) so the anti-gambling boo-birds can be somewhat ok. NYC pps, IMHO, should approach legalizing poker in this fashion, using CA (and many other states) an example of how it can be done.

[NYCNative]

[ QUOTE ]
This says it all. Why do otherwise intelligent people put blinders on when they want something?

[/ QUOTE ]As another poster mentioned, the changing of the minds in a few people that poker is a game of skill made a profound difference in at least one jurisdiction.[ QUOTE ]
You can win money in the long term playing slot machines with a sound mathematical strategy.

[/ QUOTE ]I would like to see a citation for this.[ QUOTE ]
Are slot machines a game of skill? Or would they be better classified as gambling/a game of chance?

[/ QUOTE ]The world must be black and white where you live. The issue is the word "largely." I disagree with the term as it relates to poker and blackjack for that matter.[ QUOTE ]
In poker, you're wagering something of value where the outcome of each wager is largely determined by chance.

[/ QUOTE ]The verbiage in the AG's annoucement doesn't say anything about each hand. It says the "game" of poker (and blackjack) is "largely determined by chance." I would not argue that winning a single hand is largely determined by chance, but that's not the issue, nor is it what the AG says. The "game" of poker is not "largely" determined by chance in my opinion any more than the "game" of football is largely determined by luck even though I could mention numerous plays that succeeded or failed "largely" because of luck.

It is because I can see the difference which is why I asked this question in the OP (remember that) looking for a game that would have the least variance in the shortest amount of time. That is mathematically an oxymoron, I realize, but at some point the two extremes have to merge and change places.

Possibly you missed the forest for the trees, so I shall try and reword this question in a manner that will hopefully be pedant-repellant:

GIVEN: Winning one hand of poker is luck.
GIVEN: Winning over the course of an infinite amount of poker hands is skill.

MY POSITION: Somewhere between those two extremes, skill overtakes luck as the determining factor for profitability.

YOUR JOB: Find it.

IN THE CONTEXT OF THIS CHALLENGE: Can a relatively short-term session be set up that will allow for the skillful player to have enough of an edge to beat the game. It might be impossible to come up with this scenario. Saying so would answer the question just fine, incidentally, but do it for the right reasons.

You also never answered which of the two tables I mentioned above would be +EV to play at. I think I know why.

[Quicksilvre]

[ QUOTE ]
Its all moot anyway, there isn't a politician who is going to accept any challenge on this.

[/ QUOTE ]

Bingo. The logical thing to do is often not the politically expedient thing to do.

[ QUOTE ]
If poker is "determined largely by chance," how is it that the same players are always on my TV?

[/ QUOTE ]

Survivorship bias.


Now, let's start from the beginning of a hand. You don't know what the others' cards are. So you cannot know your chance of winning. You can estimate, but not know. Then comes the flop and yet you can't know the chance of winning (don't know others' cards). And then the turn (same thing). And the river the same (if you have FH, he can have 4 of a kind). Only way to know is with royal flush.

Now you are going to argue to me that bets/raises/your opponents' past behavior etc. give a you better estimate. Maybe and maybe not. Inductive reasoning has its weaknesses.

So in the end you do not know your chances. With roulette you always know chances. So it is perhaps even more of a gambling game than a game with known chances.