oh god, I hope my wife doesn't read that. I really can't go through the same argument again.

Deny. Always bet on black.

-Wesley Snipes

Haven't read the article but it seems a bit like circular logic in how he defines which the skilled players are.

amongst other things the skilled players are defined as those who did well in the 2009 wsop.

Thing is though....I just don't see how they could be called skilled in 2009 if they didn't do well in 2008

You have to be careful with using pretty graphs as evidence of skill since even in neutral EV games, outliers always exist. For example, a common argument against hedge fund managers actually being able to beat the market is that if you have 1000 people flip a coin 10 times, it is likely at least one of them will get all heads.

One really easy way to prove poker has skill is just to find 100 people with pretty graphs. Then track their future progress. If poker has no skill, then there should be no correlation, i.e. someone with the pretty graph should have a 50 50 chance of losing in the future. Lo and behold ALL 100 continue to have winning graphs. Wow, what's the probability of that, like at most 1/2^100? Not satisfied? 1000 people gives 1/2^1000. Seriously how is a finding like this worth publishing. LOL at using 2 years of tournament data to justify this when you can use a sample size of millions of cash hands. A high school student could do this as a project for his AP statistics class.

Having said that, I think nanonoko's graph by itself pretty much proves it since his graph is so insane. If you assume poker is a game of complete luck, then I think the probability of being able to find ANYONE on Earth running that hot is ridiculously low. In other words, if poker has no skill, then the probability that even the hottest running person having a graph like nanonoko's is miniscule. Nanonoko exists. QED.

why the f is he using live donkament results as the base for his study?

I have thought for a while we have been making a mistake by not doing a highly publicized statistical study on the luck vs. skill factor.

1. Hire an independent firm or 2 to do the study.
2. Have them determine some of the most consistent winners at online poker over a large sample size. Both tourneys and cash games.
3. Choose the players they felt most confident would continue to be winners going forward.
4. Somehow make these picks secret but verifiable.
5. After adequate time for a large sample analyze this group of players new results.
6. Determine the probability that these players results were so far above average by mere chance.

This could still be done with top players outside of the US.

Or something like it could be done looking back. For example what are the chances that Dusty Schmidt has never had a losing month if poker is not a skill based game?

A halfway decent analogy to me involves basketball. What do the top 3 point shooters in college basketball shoot? Maybe 45-50 percent? Some random guy off the street will probably be able to shoot at least 25%. The point here is that if each guy shoots like 3-5 shots (a reasonable amount to shoot in any one game) then it isn't that big of a surprise if the random guy shoots better than one of the best. But over the long run a top shooters skill will shine through and be obvious. Poker is the same. One tournament or session doesn't prove much for determining skill. It is the long run that matters.

That is why like many i am unimpressed with this guys study. Use online play where the sample size would be WAY better and the results would likely be WAY more significant.

no doubt poker is about skill, you still have to put money in to make money and that may be the problem with government

Anyone smart enough to realize the flaws to Levitt's study would also be smart enough to realize that poker is a game of skill anyways so win?

If you realize the flaws: you're on our side already
If you don't: Levitt may have persuaded you to our side

SuperFreakonomics had me convinced that global warming is not a problem. He's a convincing guy with his PhD and logic and stuff.

This is a quote from their blog:

"The real purpose of the chapter is figuring out how to cool the Earth if indeed it becomes catastrophically warmer. (That is the “global cooling” in our subtitle. If someone interprets our brief mention of the global-cooling scare of the 1970′s as an assertion of “a scientific consensus that the planet was cooling,” that feels like a willful misreading.) To think we are “deniers,” would obviate the chapter’s central point: if we weren’t convinced that global warming was worth worrying about, we wouldn’t have written a chapter about proposed solutions."

I think you got the wrong message.

*sigh*


Just read all the negative "Well duh we all already know that Poker is a game of skill" responses. Sad that people who are supposed to be smart cant see past their own hole cards on this one.

Clearly what they are trying to do is educate the wider population that Poker is a game of skill. That the people on here know that well, wow stop the presses

It's just so typically myopic and short sighted of the online poker forum posting community that anything that someone does that does not meet their short sighted view of their own little world that it must be derided and shot down as useless.

Wake up.

This.

Not sure it's fair to compare the win rates between professional baseball teams to the win rates of "skilled" poker players versus what may be complete amateurs. I am sure if the worst baseball team in MLB played a collection of random amateur baseball players they would win more 90% of the games.

Furthermore I imagine if you compared the win rate of a "skilled" person who knew basic blackjack strategy to an "amateur" who did not, the "skilled" player would have a substantially better win rate at blackjack than the "amateur". Should I therefore conclude that blackjack is a game of skill like baseball and poker?

Love this statement in the article

"In human speak, that means the money of skilled players is better invested in a poker tournament than Wall Street, despite conventional wisdom that would indicate the opposite."

you have to consider his target audience, though

Blackjack IS a game of skill.

It's more like the skill involved in accounting than sports, if the accounting was being done in a noisy room under timed conditions with scantily clad women offering you alcoholic drinks frequently and you had to pretend you are not paying attention to the numbers.

Did you even read the paper?

Would flipping coins also be a skill if casinos offered 0.95:1 for heads and 0.9:1 for tails?

Disclaimer: I didn't read all responses and I don't follow much of the "poker is skill" debate so I'm probably not saying anything new and may be way off.

The fundamental flaw I see with comparing poker ROI and rake with investment ROI and management fees is that poker is a zero-sum game. In order to have a winner you must have a loser. This is not true with investments. A person invests money in an enterprise which is reasonably expected to produce some future return on that investment. The growth of the global economy means the total values in the future can exceed the total values today. It is not necessary with investments that there will be losers to match the winners.

Obviously there skill is involved in poker, but to say that it's like investing is pretty inaccurate.

I don't believe in much, but I strongly believe you should have to actually know someones real name before you are permitted to truly dislike them.

lol, nice thread, following.

From the comments:

"It may be a game of skill when played between skilled players but it's hawked by online firms and casinos alike to every unskilled player they can grab. That's the equivalent of the NFL encouragin*g the lame and the couch potatoes to suit up and spend 60 minutes being maimed & crushed by 340lb highly skilled players AND charging them ten bucks every time they get knocked down."

That's why the skill/luck argument = SMOKESCREEN...
Poker exists for sole purpose of crushing UNSKILLED fish...
Noble calling, that...
And 100 out of 100 US Senators understand this.

The Securities Industry exists for SAME REASON...
But fleecing sheep is an unfortunate byproduct...
Of a CRUCIAL element of the Capitalist System...
It's how capital is allocated efficiently.

In contrast, poker has no value beyond entertainment.

I was an econ undergrad at uchicago, there's a (lame) joke that goes like this:

Q: How do you win a Nobel Prize in economics?
A: Prove the obvious with statistics.

That is NOT a lame joke, that is hilarious. I bet the professor could barely conceal his chortle in the drawing room!