http://www.newsweek.com/poker-game-c...r-skill-317083

I think they could have re-worded this statement:

In other words, poker becomes a game of skill after around 1,500 hands

lol Newsweek

Piece of **** rag using a picture of a child for an article about online poker.

If you have skills- it's childs play.

coulda been worse

It's pretty depressing that a scientist who would have an understanding of variance and standard deviation would use such a sentence.
People will write any old bollocks to pay the rent. :/

UK paper ran a story on the same study. The 1500 hand figure made me roll my eyes and stop reading.

This is that statement in context, and it's really not that absurd at all.

newsweek is no longer a respected publication. (it hasn't been since jon meacham stopped being editor.)

The first part of the quoted passage is fine. It makes some statistical sense, and refers to probabilities over a specific sample size, without using mathematical terms (like standard deviation) that a typical reader wouldn't understand.
The offending line at the start of the second paragraph doesn't make sense. Poker is a skill game on every hand. It doesn't suddenly become a skill game after 1500 hands.
There's also the problem that skill edge isn't well defined. If you have a tiny edge over your opponent, it can take tens of thousands of hands for the skill edge to be converted into profit because of random variance. If someone is a total drooler, however, it's pretty hard for him to be ahead after 100 hands. A bigger edge implies less chance of losing, ldo.

Given that the apparent offending sentence is an expressed paraphrase of a sentence that you deemed valid, your contention here doesn't really have any legs; it's mostly just speculation based off of you reading very deeply into what is really a concise and unambiguous statement.

To paraphrase once more:

Until about 1,500 hands, the overall results of a single person are predominately determined by chance about 75% of the time. After 1,500 hands, results are predominately determined by skill (i.e. If you have 1000 players who are above average skill play 1600 hands of poker, you can expect that more than 50% of 750 of them will be winners. Conversely, if you have 1000 players who are above average skill play 1400 hands you can expect that of at least 750 of them, 50% will win and 50% will lose.)

Obviously several leaps have been made to get to this statement from the actual data being used, but I don't think there are any blaring informational gaps that make it as absurd as some of you are claiming.

One day someone's going to go postal and get self justice on the wrongs that have decimated the public's social game. How government and corporations ever had a say, let alone forcefully physically broke up, a game that is social in nature and played by people, I never understood. It's the sheeple mentality that just accepts and allows these outside entities to control their game.

Those who are sarcastic about the government "trying to get in their bedroom" are blind to just how far things have and can go.

of course they did, news media thrives on stupid **** like this. WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?!?!?! Is going to get way more tweets and hastags and all that other stupid ****, than just an intellgient article written without out any bias and not framed by some dip**** headline writer. People wouldnt click on that

I agree with you. He basically said that it is a combination of luck and skill but that over a large enough sample the variance averages out and the skilled player comes out ahead.

He just did it without using all of the mathematical terms that would cause peoples eyes to glaze over and ignore the article.

The 1500 hands part was a bit arbitrary but i guess he had to pick a number.

In many cases the better players are doing better after 1.5k hands and it is surprising it takes even that long. With a big edge i am at least a favorite to be up after 1.5k hands, and that is with the rake included. With small edges 5k hands is pure luck.

If you're not a favorite to be up after one hand, you're not a favorite to be up after 1.5K hands. If that's not obvious to anyone than NewsWeek writers know more about math than you do.

I guess an exception could be if you need to observe someone's game before you beat them -- but then again if that's true you're not better than them at the beginning.

Agreed. Its wording is terrible.

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And who takes 24 hours to play 1,500 hours? Some of us manage that in an hour, and the vast majority of winning players would complete it within 4 hours. 1-4 hours is far more realistic than the stated 19-25 hours (which obviously implies someone single-tabling which is a ridiculous assumption, especially given it's basically referring to a boundary within which a profitable player can expect to demonstrate his edge, virtually all of whom multi-table.)

If you're clearing 1500 hands in one hour, you're contributing to the death of online poker.

Thanks.

Anyone who isn't a net depositor and isn't actively recruiting new players/money to the game is contributing to the death of online poker. I would guess that something like 95% of net withdraw-ers fit this profile, so you aren't really saying much.

Maybe I am missing the point, but I think the author is trying to say that poker is indeed a game of skill. Of course, there are elements of chance involved in poker, but predominantly poker is a game of skill. Yes, the way they worded the point was not very good, but nobody should care about that detail.

In tennis, say, I might be able to win a few points here and there versus a professional tennis player. But I almost never will win a game off a pro. So one can conclude, if one wants to put it this way, that tennis is a sport of skill at the game level (not at the point level). Of course, this statement does not really reflect any tennis-based reality, but it is how an after-the-fact analysis could be worded. At what juncture does the skill overwhelm the luck?

Again, The biggest troll in 2p2 history contributes nothing to the discussion but yet feels he needs his voice heard but says actual nothing with his words.

Please leave this once great forum and never return.

You would never win a point off any pro in tennis if they took you seriously.

Just like you would never score a point (maybe 1 in 1,000) against an NBA player.

You seem to have

"I'm an idiot and I say stupid stuff that is easy for intelligent people to use against me and magnify how stupid I look"

confused with

"This guy is such an idiot, nothing he says agrees with what I (very intelligently mind you) think. He must be a troll, I wish he would stop trolling my super-smart posts"

Trust me, the former is the case, and no one here except you thinks otherwise.

Also, this is wrong.

Pro basketball players do not have a 99.99% edge over regular people.

I think there might be extreme cases where you are comparing post-post and the size advantage is so extreme that you could be correct (guys like yao ming and shaq), but for most positions, you are absolutely wrong sir.

And tennis players obviously miss shots at a much higher rate than 0.01%.