closest game to poker, skill v. luck

you've got a point, but i think backgammon and bridge (more-so backgammon than bridge)

Also, consider shuffle board.

LMAO

definitely backgammon, but i think there is more luck in backgammon, because if two players know what the'yre doing, the game usually come down to 1 decisive roll. in poker there are usually more than 1 crucial situation in a session

[Python49]

Uno

[soko]

Football, more specifically, the Redskins

[OrangeKing]

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Baseball

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This is actually not a horrible answer, except that teams of hugely different skill wouldn't have much variance in their results. But teams on the same level - say, almost all major-league teams - do have a lot of variance.

An even better example would be a single batter's batting average. There is a ton of variance there that commentators go nuts trying to explain...strangely enough, you very rarely hear them mention sample size. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Mempho]

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Baseball

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This is actually not a horrible answer, except that teams of hugely different skill wouldn't have much variance in their results. But teams on the same level - say, almost all major-league teams - do have a lot of variance.

An even better example would be a single batter's batting average. There is a ton of variance there that commentators go nuts trying to explain...strangely enough, you very rarely hear them mention sample size. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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If you set up deep stacks and low blinds, a vastly superior player will almost always win, too (if he plays without regard to time).

[Rasputin]

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Baseball

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This is actually not a horrible answer, except that teams of hugely different skill wouldn't have much variance in their results. But teams on the same level - say, almost all major-league teams - do have a lot of variance.

An even better example would be a single batter's batting average. There is a ton of variance there that commentators go nuts trying to explain...strangely enough, you very rarely hear them mention sample size. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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It wasn't intended to be a horrible answer, it was serious. I see any number of similarities between the games.

Of course you have to limit it to a relatively small range of participants. If you have a better than average team against a high school team the variance won’t be enough.

As a matter of fact, the Red Sox have faced the Boston College team every spring for as long as I can remember. It used to be the first game for both teams and BC usually didn’t score and never won.

Lately they have changed it so that BC has some games first and BC has managed to score and actually had a lead once. They still haven’t won.

But if you compare baseball and football you’ll see that the best NFL team usually has something like 12-14 wins and there’s usually a team with only one or two. Meanwhile there is almost never a major league baseball team that has fewer than fifty or so wins or more than about 105.

If you think about it, winning poker is based on four things, 1) Patience, 2) Aggression, 3) Unpredictability, 4) Luck. If you look at baseball, you’ll see the same things. The best offensive performers are the ones who are both patient and aggressive. They listen to Ted Williams, wait for their pitch and beat the ever loving snot out of it. On the pitching side, you can’t afford to be predictable unless you have a 101 MPH fastball. Still, a pitching staff will throw 100-150 pitches per game and there will be mistakes. If that mistake is with the bases empty you give up one run and if it comes with them loaded, you give up four. Only luck is the difference. And the bunching of hits is pretty much luck unless the pitcher can’t pitch from the stretch.

And luck is luck. The difference between a line drive and a popup is about a quarter of an inch.

A lot of folks are under the impression that the good teams are good because they win close games but the reality is that the good teams are good because they avoid close games. Much like in a poker tournament if you avoid getting all your chips in, you’ll never get busted.

[Duke]

Scrabble has a pretty high "entry level." At the point where I am, I could beat a guy like Trey with the right tiles. If you're talking about some random 1100 guy on ISC he has no chance, no matter how good the tiles are for him.

With poker you can be a retard and get really lucky, as you see in many TV tournaments. With scrabble you can compensate for "really bad" tiles by making plays with a vast vocabulary, but with poker you can't do anything but lose a hand. The extra bet that the pro makes in poker is far less of an edge than the 25 points the pro gets for garbage played well against the 6 the tard gets for not being able to hook ?EILNRT since he doesn't know the 2's.

~D

[AaronBrown]

You specify just in terms of skill versus luck, but there are also different kinds of skill (the only kinds of luck are good and bad). Baseball, backgammon and bridge require skill, but totally different from Poker skills.

I'd match Poker to Gin Rummy. You can get dealt Gin, like you can get dealt a Royal Flush; but in the long run the better player will collect the most money. The skills are similar, simple cardplay with complex psychology.