I like the idea of using the argument that "if you can intentionally lose, then there must be some strategy element"

...but how do you separate poker from blackjack?

you dont get rakeback in blackjack

haha....+1...

The way I've always explained it to other people is;

In blackjack/rouette/craps/slots/etc, you are playing against the casino. The casino isn't going to offer a game where they aren't a favorite.

Poker is played against other players. The casino takes the rake (for providing a service), but effectively you are playing against other players.

Well blackjack to an extent is a skill game as well insofar as it is possible to to get an advantage but I wouldn't go down that road in this sort of discussion. If the person your arguing with brings it up then I would say that there is a strategy to achieve the highest possibility of winning but then raise the argument you mentioned above that the casino will not offer a game where the odds are in their favour and that poker is inherently different due to it being played against other people.

You could also say that the dealer in blackjack has to stick to a set strategy in how they play their cards which is another reason why poker is so different, other poker players can employ a weak strategy which is where your profit comes from, blackjack does not offer this luxury.

No one in the world thinks darts are pure luck. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Intentionally losing is a stupid example.
Everyone knows Blackjack is mostly luck with a faint glimmer of skill (stay on 17)
You can intentionally lose if you keep hitting until you bust.
Yet, no one thinks Blackjack is a real skill, it's just for degen idiots.

Can anyone help clean up the following demonstration that poker requires some skill?

A simple example:
Your 2 pocket/hole cards = Q Hearts and 4 Hearts
Shared community cards on the table = J Hearts, 6 hearts, A Spades
2 more community cards to come.
Note that you have no made hand, but a possible flush draw
(You have 2 hearts, and there are 2 Hearts on the board. One more Heart makes a flush, a very strong winning hand)

Next, your opponent bets $50 into $100 pot.
Does he have an Ace to pair the community card Ace?
Forget stuff like bluffing, let’s say he shows you his Ace.
Do you call, fold, or raise? There are 9 hearts still in play.
The odds of next community card being a Heart is 9/47 = 18% or about 4:1 odds (5 Heart Flush will beat his pair of Aces)
You need to call his $50 to win $150 ($100 pot + his $50 bet) So, you would be paid 3:1 on your money, but only have a 4:1 odds of winning.
So, you should fold. In the short term, anything can happen. Roll the dice!! Com’on hearts!! BUT, in the long run, this specific scenario is a losing venture. You fold.
(Forget playing 8 hours, even 8 hours is nothing, in the short term. To know if you’re a winning player with a real edge, you must consider ALL your card playing time as ONE unit ....50,000 hands over 2000 hours or 5 years, etc.)
So, you do not call. ....But, should you raise the $50 bet? Now, you have 2 ways of winning. Either by hitting the Heart. Or by inducing the opponent to fold (fold equity)
What are the odds opponent will fold his Aces? (Maybe you have 44, 66, JJ for a triple set)
What if you were the aggressor in the first place? If you raise to $50 (to win the $150 pot) opponent only needs to fold 1 in 4 times to make it a break even play for you. (Lose $50, Lose $50, Lose $50, Win $150)
Does opponent have more than 25% odds of folding? If so, BET/RAISE!

Back to the hand, but there are 2 cards left to come, not one! How many chips do you have left? What if you only have $50 left? Now, what if you shoved your stack (also inducing fold equity) and saw the next TWO cards?
The odds of hitting a Heart in the next 2 cards is about 36% or 2:1 odds... Now, you are getting paid 3:1 odds with a 2:1 odds of winning. You want to play this all day long.

Next, let’s consider the money NOT in the pot. Does the opponent have $50 left or $350 left? This also matters. You might lose this particular hand, b/c odds are a 5th Heart isn’t coming in the next 2 cards (36%)
but if you played this situation infinity times, when you do hit the heart, you will bet even more and will the opponent call with his pair of Aces? This is called “implied odds”.
You can justify playing even worse odds (what if opponent bet $100 into $100 pot only giving you 2:1 odds, not 3:1. if the opponent has a large stack that will be lose on the rare time you hit the heart)
Of course, if the bet was $25 into $100 pot, now your odds are even better (You need to bet $25 to win $150 and have a 36% chance of winning the hand. You are getting paid 5:1 with a 3:1 odds of getting a 5th heart. Money machine!!)

And this is just a very simple example, not factoring in dozens of other variables like profile of opponent (Does he play 10% of hands or 50%)? Knowing this, you can narrow down the RANGE of his cards, since cards are random, BUT distributed normally.
ie: If he plays 50% of his hands, you have a much wider range of junk that he might be playing vs. if he only plays 10% of hands (in which case you know his range is narrowed down to any pair, only 2 face cards, but not Ax or Kx)
Or, how many other people are in the hand, what is your position (first to act, last to act, etc)
etc etc etc....

I'm not convinced that there are people with even the basic knowledge of the game who believe that poker is 100% luck and involves 0% skill, the same as flipping a coin. I mean, they don't think that some players are better at choosing what hands to play, or can pick up on tells or bluff better than others?

It's possible to play blackjack profitably so there are a lot of people who think it is a skill.

See my above point though that as you are playing against the house that follow a set standard of rules in blackjack, i.e. their strategy never deviates, this makes it a wholly different example to the poker one I was giving.

I tend to ignore the example of blackjack or just say it's borderline if people ask. But it (and similar table games) does seem to be a counter-example to the idea that a game in which someone could deliberately lose is a skill game - if skill game is defined as one in which you can be plus EV through application of skill.

In any case it's a 1-player game like Freecell ffs only simpler.

@RickySteve - what would be the best strategy to lose money at roulette? Are you thinking something like a reverse martingale? What if you had to lose several multiples of the max bet?

I think the problem is that people associate poker with being shady since UIEGA in 2006 and BF in 2011 and the stigma poker sites have of being dishonest and not being able to cash out properly.
Added to the fact it is seen as a luck based casino game like roulette or craps, the game is not seen by people as healthy competition but as a game for desperados or those who think there is skill.
Experience: people I know. I stopped trying to convince people a long time ago, I just keep quiet and grind away when no one is watching me.

A large percentage of my friends believed that poker was all luck. Ironically, the loudest one of them won a 15 man sit and go that we did in college. His argument became "I've played poker twice in my life and I just beat all you guys, so it's all luck!"

I would bet that 90% of your friends who do not play poker would have no idea what the UIEGA or the poker black friday is.

The general population has the idea that poker is played in a casino, so it's gambling, so it's all luck. And you will end up broke on a street corner begging for booze money if you keep playing

I often quote the Annette_15 story of the no-look tournament win. I think it is an unanswerable case for poker being a skill game.

http://annetteobrestad.blogspot.co.u...-at-cards.html

Just show them Nanonoko's graph over millions of hands luck obviously has no factor over that big of a sample.

"It's a skill game like chess. The better player will always come out on top in the long run, it just can take longer in poker due to the luck aspect of the game."

Not very difficult.

People's negative view of poker originates in the obvious: most poker players would do better if it were a game of pure luck.

I don't think that's true at all. I think that people differ on what the definition of a game of skill is.

When you ask people what defines a game of skill what definition do people give you? How have you tried to demonstrate that poker fits that definition? What objections do people have to your argument?

I'll admit here that I was part of the crowd who didn't get that poker was skill-based until relatively late. How late? The 2004 Main Event was on TV in the press box. One of the interns turned to me and started talking about how good he was at poker.

"Wait... how is someone 'good' at poker?" I asked. "Doesn't it depend on what cards you get?"

At that point, I had only played kitchen-table, five-card draw hands as a kid. Some of you may remember those. You played every hand, you never folded, and the winner was always who had the best holding at the end. To be a big winner (or big loser), as stated above, was to cold-deck someone. So yeah, in the version I played, being "good" at poker meant you got dealt the better hand more often than the others at the table.

Seeing that he was dealing with a total poker noob, he said something to the effect of this:

"You play blackjack, right? That has skill involved. You make decisions to hit, stand, double down, and so forth."

Having played blackjack (albeit badly), I agreed to this.

"Well, imagine if you played blackjack where you could decide how much to put in the betting circle AFTER you got your cards. You might have hands where it's so bad, you refuse to put anything in there. Like if you get a 15 and the dealer has a face card up. You could still win that, right? But your chances aren't very good, and you know it. Other times, you might get the 20 and the dealer has the five up. You're putting more money in."

The light flickered on pretty quickly before he even got into the notions of bluffing, hand-reading, or anything else. A player's success in the game has more to do with the decisions he/she makes and less to do with the actual cards dealt than I had realized.

I also remember reading some article in Esquire or something about a player saying how most pros fold the majority of their starting hands. I think it said it was in the 70 percent range. That was another eye-opener.

For what it's worth, this is the definition of gambling for a lot of people. Sure, the courts and legislators tend to use the predominance of skill vs. luck to determine whether an activity is gambling.

But there are probably large numbers of people who, if you asked to shoot 20 free throws, roll 10 frames of bowling, play or a round of golf (activities which anyone would acknowledge are mostly skill-based), would call it gambling as soon as you put money on it.

We don't agree with that, but we're not the majority on this stuff.

Just because it's a simple game doesn't mean it isn't a game of skill. Or do you think there's a lot of luck involved in tic-tac-toe?

If I choose to stand with whatever 2 cards I get dealt, I'm going to have dramatically different results than if I play proper strategy.

LOL. Seems like a simple one word change to this would be the exact thing you're trying to argue against:

Let them play Phil Ivey!!!!

It's amazing how so many poker players (/people on 2p2) forget about the general population's negative connotation of poker.

Poker happens in casinos.
It's gambling.
It's fun to do every once in a while, with friends, but if you do it habitual you will end up homeless and broke.

play them for it, heads up. Play tournament style, equal chips but you put in slightly more money.

tell him youll do it all day. If he declines, tell him not to bring it up again.

I think the general public do know poker is a game that involves skill. It's just about how much weight there is in the skill.

Technically brushing your teeth is a skill, and so is tying your shoe laces.

They think "playing cards, big whoop, I could do it too, if I gave a damn"