kind of irrelevant, also i think a great example of a harder working that says himself he had no real talent for the game is leatherass. if you read any of his interviews the guy was a break even LHE player making his money solely on rakeback and then moved to NL where he played and played and played practicing and improving his game. Thats really what it means to me of course i think someone like durr and ivey do the same but also have just a knack for the game and this is just in them and learn from all their mistakes

I kinda doubt you truly believe that.

Top players go broke = they lose game over. Go collect money and rebuy. Best players in chess don't lose to amateurs. What's the probability of a grandmaster losing to an amateur? If you compare the two probabilities you know chess is 100% skill game.

There's this argument constantly flowing about being Kasparov. You can't really aim that high because there's only one Number 1 competitor in each sport or competition. The argument has to be top 10 or whatever arbitrary number in the upper echelon.

I believe you can train in everything. But everyone who's played sports or done art or music knows there's only so much time one can put in. There is a natural talent. You can't teach speed at soccer, you can't teach singing high notes or tone to become the next recording artist, you have to have the physical makeup and then years of practice to go with it.

There's books on multiple intelligences, tho the article says there's no gene. Arguement's flawed, seems to suggest the gene is the only lead to talent.

Everyone is born with their own potential level of achievement.
How hard they work determines how well they fulfil that potential.
Natural talent = potential.

It is absolutely ridiculous to compare poker to chess,golf,hockey,basketball and other games of pure skill you guys have used for your analogys!How many times has a weekend hack luck boxed his way to a US open win??How many casual players have made the finals of world chess championships?In these sports casual players cannot beat the best.In poker they can.

Think of it this way,what side of this prop would you want?Ivey(or any top poker player) and Kasparov(or any top chess player)play a game of chess eveyday for 100k,and a poker freezeout for the same amount for one year.Who do you think will have all the money at the end of that year?The answer is the top chess player because he will win at poker probably 140-150 times,maybe more if he runs good.The poker player will win the chess side of the bet 0/365 times.

Same thing for golf,the poker player wins 0 and the golf pro will win some poker matches.

In poker you do have to work hard,and have talent,but you also have to run good.

Malcom Gladwell in his book 'The Tipping Point" has a really interesting chapter based on genius. In the chapter in talks about some seriously brilliant people from Mozart to Bill Gates and some chess guys and shows that research shows that genius in any given field often equates to around 10,000 hours of practice at any task.

Mozart wrote his best stuff mid twenties - Gates got a load of free programming time and hit his 10,000 by mid twenties.

Interesting when applied to poker given the massively increased hours people can put in these days compared to Brunson etc back in the day.

OP was asking if there was such a thing as natural talent in poker. He wasn't asking if it was all you needed.

I have a feeling if Ivey were to ever make a training video, we would all be sorely disappointed in his approach.

I'm saying a guy who investigated a load of people who had studied various people across arts and sciences suggests natural talent doesn't exist - 10,000 hours of study or practice creates the sort of image people mistake for 'natural ability.'

It's not 'natural' it's learnt.

bob2007 has a natural talent for bumping a thread that lay dormant for 8 months and replying as if it were posted yesterday (long nap, Bob?)

I don't agree with him then.
I think those 10,000 hours of study merely allow people to realise their potential. A potential that was always there.

But then again his is a theory, so is mine.
Although his is wrong.

He makes a comparison with a study on young piano players. Aged 13-15 those who their teachers considered to have the most 'natural talent' (I think they used the phrase inherent ability but can't find book right now) were voted for by their various teachers.

In some cases these pupils became top performers - and I mean international standard - but not always. Those who did had always hit the 10,000hr mark crucially along with those not voted for who unsurprisingly had also hit the magic 10,000hr mark.

Sadly for me it seems 1% inspiration and 99% hard work holds true.

Mind you these people only conducted research over the course of several years on the subject. Obv. just formulating an opinion and posting it on the internetz is equally valid.

Being serious for a minute that book and anything Gladwell has written are well worth it.

Did the study involve any non piano players who then spent 10,000 hours?

Strikes me that 'inherent ability' is the same as potential and we are actually agreeing here..

There's not as much luck in other sports as there is in poker - but there's still a luck involved. I definitely would not call it "pure skill". Golf is another example.. a few lucky bounces in a round or maybe the ball hits the stick and goes down rather than bounces off and rolling off the green. These games have a higher %% of skill / luck than poker, but it's there. The worst team in any professional sport can beat the best team any given day. Why doesn't Tiger win them all? Skill does not always trump luck or other factors, in almost any game or sport you can name. (Chess MIGHT be the purest skill game, but maybe not 100%)

If it hasn't been mentioned here, Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers book addresses success and natural talent.

I don't believe necessarily in natural talent. I think it's just as likely that you are good at poker at age 15+ because you are a product of your environment. Your parents influence on you, the friends you chose or that chose you, the teacher you got in 4th grade (thru alphabetical listing of last name) who turned you onto math, maybe a book you just happened upon that turned you onto gaming.. any number of things that planted the seed and started the growth within to be good at math, poker, gaming, cards, reading people.. etc. I'm not sure it's "natural", I'd say it's probably just as likely the fate of the way the cards in your life ran out up to the point of finding poker.

That being said, you have to be born with certain innate traits to even have the opportunity to succeed at medium or high levels at anything in life. Being born blind, deaf, low-IQ, horrible parents, etc.. all these things and more are definitely huge hurdles that the vast majority could never overcome.

I think of the modern pros, Jennifer Tilly & Phil Gordon probably have the most natural talent. It would be amazing if they really applied themselves to same degree as Ivey, Reese, Magriel, etc.

LOL

Maybe their natural talent has already reached its full potential.

I'm still loling almost a year later at this

Natural talent is way overexaggerated as far as tournament pros are concerned - half of them only make it because they were prepared to take shots in big buy-in events and got lucky for a decent score here or there.

There are no doubt thousands of players in the world as good if not better than most tournament pros that will never make it big because they aren't rolled for it or aren't prepared to take a shot.

I've always considered high stakes tournament poker to be the same as pole vaulting. There's probably thousands of people in the world capable of being the world's best but who can be bothered buying a 5 metre pole?

Outliers

phil ivey in his teenage years when he got his fake id he pretty much live in a casino in atlantic city thats why they call him no home jerome i dont know if you cant work harder than that
tell me anyone who didnt had to play taht many hours and become insanely good at poker

Yeah sorry it was Outliers by Gladwell not Tipping Point

You know speaking on the talent side of things,

I read a very detailed and interesting article once that explained how "talent" is a misunderstood term. People would tend to believe it's a certain skill in life given by God.

In fact (and I strongly agree with this) talent is actually the will a certain person has to get better at something. The drive or the motivation one has to take himself to the next level at a certain activity. Some people don't posses the will or motivation to take their game to the next level, some are born with the love of a certain thing because that's the way they are.

It doesn't mean that when you pick up a basketball, you can sink every shot you take.
It doesn't just happen.
Instead compared to a hundred other people you practice more, work at it more, but more importantly the effort put into the practice you take is a practice that can only put into something you have this talent for (and the talent is the will)

So maybe Negreanu, Hellmuth, Doyle and all these pros were born with this motivation.
Obviously some don't have it, and some have it more then others,

but I believe when talent comes so does hard work. (first post btw)

There a certain personality traits or "genetics" that give someone the ability to be better than someone else than poker.

So yes, there is natural talent.

natural talent on its own = win/loose
hustle = win
natural talent + hustle = win more

This was a cool thread, haven't read it all yet though. I was thinking about this a while ago, and I think that what allows the top players to become as good as they are is that they are degens for strategy games, or maybe just poker in particular. For someone who is just obsessed with beating other people in poker they will have no problem grinding alot, and constantly thinking about how to beat the players they are playing.

That means the work they have to put in won't feel like work and they will gladly do it. Someone who isn't so fond of poker but is playing mostly for money will consider it work, and the amount of thinking, calculating, and generally just working on their game they have to do will feel monumental.

So yeah, apart from that I definitely do think that the best of the best (durrrr, galfond, ivey, w/e) will have a natural talent beyond that. But, I think that most of someone's 'talent' if they are half intelligent is going to be how badly they want to get good.

Kinda makes me wish I was a degen for poker strategy and not just a degen in general.

Also running hot helps too

edit: I guess I kinda forgot to say that I think the players with an obsession are gonna find it easier to stay tilt free because losing money in bad beats won't mean as much to them since they'll constantly be trying to think of how to outplay. I guess that just comes under the ability to grind on your A game for a long time, which is obviously very important.

R. Redford DISAGREES!!!