I agree to some extent, but it obviously depends on the EV of the player and the sample size. Clearly if someone has an EV of zero (precisely breakeven), then they have a 50% chance of making money, whether they play 1 hand or 1 billion. The lower the expectation, and the larger the sample size, the more likely it is that the player will lose.
As a quick example from the Variance Simulator, someone with an EV of -1bb/100 (i.e. a marginal loser) and a standard deviation of 75bb/100 has almost a 10% chance of profit if they play one million hands. Someone with an EV of minus ten bb/100, however, has zero chance of making money over that sample size.
One million hands is an awful lot though. It's not unreasonable for a "losing player" to have a heater lasting 100,000 hands, but the vast majority of live players will never reach 100k hands, because the game is slow and no one plays 24 hours a day. (To some degree, "The fish that always sucks out on me" actually exists, because someone has to run like Jesus.)

Example: EV of minus 5bb/100, SD of 75bb/100. Probability of loss over 100k hands is 98%. (2% chance of making money, despite the negative EV).



Tournament variance is particularly crazy. Noah SD showed that even 80,000 tournaments isn't enough of a sample size to guarantee profit for a theoretical MTT crusher. Most people don't play 80,000 tourneys per lifetime, obviously. The self-proclaimed greatest tournament player of all time has only played a few thousand, and Jamie Gold made more money in one week than Hellmuth won in 20 years.

Its at least 20% skills. But online poker rooms are rigged so when you add that into the picture you need to play a lot of hands to make a profit.

I agree in general, just wanted to use an easy to understand example.

If you say "at least 1000 a year", do you mean hours, hands, tournaments? The vast majority of live players will never get close to 1000 hours/year and obviously nowhere near 1000 tournaments/year. I would say the average "regular" in a card room plays 1-2 days a week for 4-6 hours for a total of maybe 8 hours/week which results in around 10000 hands in a year. Now you (and me) say that's not a valid sample size but the truth is that the majority of those players who keep track of their score will definitely consider themselves to be winning/losing players over that year.

For a 10k hand sample and 75 SD, the chance of winning as a 3BB/100 loser is around 35% and 10% of players who lose 10BB/100 will still turn a profit over that year.

Somebody who goes to the card room once a week, 40 weeks/year for a 4 hour session has a >20% chance of turning a profit for the year even if his expected win rate is -9BB/100.

There's a such thing as bad decisions in poker. If you were trying to lose on purpose, you'd lose at a much faster rate. Since not all decisions are equal (ie there are right and wrong plays), there is skill in poker by definition. It's that simple.

Some might acknowledge the above point but still think there are no long-term winners whose results weren't the product of extreme luck. Whoever thinks this either thinks all players are nearly identical in skill level, or they have no idea how math works, or most likely both. To think that the drooliest low-stakes live players are as good as Ivey/Polk/etc is just certifiably bonkers and only said droolers can possibly think that.

It's funny how the element of randomness completely obliterates people's judgment. This topic is the equivalent of, "There is no skill in Chess, it's just moving pieces around and praying the other king ends up trapped before yours." This is the age of Libratus, PioSolver etc but sure, Poker is just tic-tac-toe with some card-drawing mixed in.

Do you have any idea what the distribution of win-rates is among the player pool? I would expect few players to be very close to breakeven. I really have no idea though and could easily be wrong.

I meant to say hours as I wanted to be able to include live and online players, although even 1000 live hours isn't a really big sample.

I wanted to look at those with large samples because those would be the players we should look to in determining whether poker has a significant skill component. Considering players with 10k hand samples isn't enough to highlight the skill component.

Texas Hold'em actually seems pretty good at giving weak players a chance to win over a decent sample size, while at the same time offering a big enough edge per variance for people to reasonably strive to be professionals.

My personal guess, and it's only that, is that atrocious losers usually either get better or stop playing poker*. The losers that stick around might tend towards break even, because it's easier to hide the results of bad play in the statistical 'noise'.

* Not 100% of course, anyone who plays in a casino will be aware of those guys that turn up to either run like god or, more usually, spunk off a set amount of money before leaving.

Yes. If you have players with millions of hands, we get a pretty good understanding if they are winning or losing.

The point that people like Arty and I are trying to make is that there are lots of players out there who have won money and think/say they are winning players even though their hand sample is way too small to consider that "fact". I'm actually pretty sure the number of those players exceeds the number of players whose lower boundary in a 95% confidence interval is >0.

I don't have a large database to "prove" my hunch, but the massive droolers (that lose 30bb/100) are few and fair between (most of the whales in my database seem to "disappear" before they've even played 50 hands on my tables), and I think the vast majority of frequent players ("regs") have theoretical winrates between plus and minus 5bb/100. This closeness to breakeven is kind of why so many (slightly losing) players keep playing for months/years, because they (or indeed I) can have mini-heaters that make them think they can beat the game, and a losing month or two is just "some bad variance".
The main point I wanted to emphasise is that poker is a game of very small skill edges, and massive amounts of luck-based variance in results. Skill tends to 'overcome' luck in the long run, but when winrates are <5bb/100 and standard deviation is >70bb/100, the long run is incredibly long. All kinds of crazy stuff can happen over 10,000 or 100,000 hands.

I'm not sure if this is any help, but this is a chart posted by Fast Forward 100NL player of the winrates of the 40 regs he'd played most hands against.
Most of the win/lossrates are in single figures for these high-volume players. For players that he has smaller samples on, the winrates/lossrates would naturally be more extreme. FWIW, it was quite surprising to me to see how much variation in results there was even for the heaviest grinders. e.g. Someone lost at -17bb/100 over the 18k hands in that particular database. I can only presume he made money on his other tables, because that lossrate is horrendous for a supposed reg.

I sometimes think I'm just an unlucky bastard, and maybe it's true. I'm pretty sure at the stakes I play I make the least mistakes against my opponents but, and this is also answering my own statement of luck, if you truly are unlucky and are the poor sod who's at the wrong end of variance, well just ****.
The thing with luck is that there's nothinf you, I or anyone else can do to change that.
All we can do is help to minimize the loss and hopefully one day the luck turns and you get that big score.
If it doesn't turn, cry and hate life, it sucks and I and others would sympathise but again not much we can do about it.

@Art looking at your chart.
If you count only players at bb/100 ABOVE 2 then about 30% of guys are winning.
Given a much larger sample I would say that the number would be closer to 20 or 15%.
It would be really interesting to see if that 15% number is correct especially as it pertains to guys who have played 50k or more hands.
ALL IN ALL
I think the chart does illustrate that YES there are in Fact winning poker players.
Poker is clearly probablity based. Anyone who thinks luck is dominant over skill in Hold Em is just plain ole misinformed.

Nanonokos graph is one of the sickest things ever. Dude is obviously highly highly skilled

I heard it from a politician that poker is not skill even when players can calculate probabilites, as the cards that come out of the deck are random.

The majority of people also see that poker is gambling.

There is no statistical sample size that is long enough to prove that poker is not gambling.

Some are professionals, but it is because they are very lucky. Personally, I have seen players running hot for months, and I know there are players who have been running hot or cold for years. But finally, 99% of even those winners end up busted or stop playing after a long non-winning to losing period (sometimes years), rake getting them, luck ending, others being luckier. It is just statistics of millions of players that creates the illusion of there being winners and losers.

remember that every sample of hands taken by a reg is biased (shows lowered winrates) due to one seat at the table being guaranteed reg

I like this:

And this:


Finally:
Good...since poker is a gambling game. Better players gamble when the odds of a positive outcome are in their favor. (otherwise we fold [or bluff], correct?)

Stock traders, horse handicappers, sports betting etc..... all have the same element of (skill v luck). In those professions as well as in poker, better preparation usually leads to better decision making. *see heehaww statement above.

if it weren't for this I would have thought the rest of your post was serious.

But there is one slightly interesting thing to dissect from it: There is of course a seed of truth to this, which may muddy the waters for some readers. To those readers, let me flip it around and say, there is no statistical sample size that is long enough to prove that Roulette favors the house. Therefore casinos are just plain lucky to be profiting from Roulette year in and year out.

(Edit: maybe that's not even a good argument to use, because half of the people who say poker is all luck will turn around and say it's possible to beat roulette/___ as long as you're disciplined enough to quit when ahead and come back the next day, or if you wait for 6 reds in a row, or if only you had a million dollars to Martingale with, etc etc lol all the stuff I have to listen to when playing live 1/2nl)

If a politician said it, it must be true. I always look for opinions about poker from people who, as a profession, don't have to know anything at all about poker - and who, as a profession, are known to be liars.

There is no statistical sample size necessary to prove that poker involves gambling - because it is inherent in the game itself. There similarly doesn't need to be any sample size necessary to show that poker has elements of skill inherent in the game. All you have to do is answer the following questions:

1) have you ever played a hand, that looking back on, wish you had played differently?

2) have you ever played poker with people who were so clueless, that you knew they had virtually no chance to win?

3) have you ever seen someone (including yourself) play a hand and say "boy did he play that badly"?

4) have you ever seen someone play a hand and say "boy did he play that well"?

If you answer no to all of these, then you really haven't been paying attention. And if you answer yes to any of them, you are demonstrating that poker has an element of skill. It is impossible to make a bad play or a good play if skill is not involved. It is impossible to play a hand badly, or play a hand well.

Compare this to a game like roulette (assuming an unbiased wheel). I don't care how many hours of study you put in, or how experienced and savvy of a player you are - you simply can't make a good play, and you pretty much (there are a couple minor exceptions to this) can't make a bad play.

If you have a bunch of people who are of exactly equal ability (which is pretty much unquantifiable and impossible to determine) then the outcome of any hand, session or tournament will be determined by luck. The greater the disparity in abilities, the more the outcomes will be determined by skill. But there will always be a luck factor, and poker is, in fact gambling. But it being gambling does not mean it isn't a game of skill.

It's obvious that you're not very knowledgeable about poker, and that's fine, if you care to study you can learn more.

Your post reminds me sort of like a beginning physics student the first day of class. You go up to the professor and say "Ya know, I've looked into it a little bit, and the 2-slit experiment just doesn't make sense to me, so I've concluded that quantum physics is simply wrong." Now the professor might say "Well, you certainly know a lot more about this than me - I've only been studying this for 20 years. So I guess you're right. Class cancelled!" But somehow I doubt it.

But more concerning than your lack of specific poker knowledge is your lack of critical thinking skills in general, and I can tell you if you don't improve on that, you're going to have a hard time with any endeavor that's mildly to extremely difficult.

Regarding Phil Ivey, no it's not even close to someone winning the lottery. It's like winning the lottery 1,000 times. And that has not, does not, and will not ever happen. Example. Put 10,000 people in a "golf" tournament, including 9,999 amateurs (let's say handicaps of 10 to 20) and Tiger Woods. The "golf" that we're playing is simply a single putt of 50 feet. If you make it you win (or go to a playoff). Tiger Woods is very unlikely to win this, and a very superficial thinker might deduce from this that there is no golf skill, it's just luck. But play a real tournament of 4 full rounds of golf. Not only is it extremely unlikely that anyone but Tiger Woods will win the tournament, it's impossible (barring something like a sniper assassinating Woods walking down the first fairway.)

Sorry, not even that. There's quite a bit of luck in chess as well. If there weren't, the rating system wouldn't work.

Consider: If I am rated at 1400 and you are rated at 1300, then you are going to beat me 1 time out of 3. Which time? I have no idea. But this is mathematically guaranteed. In fact, this is the precise definition of our chess ratings. If you beat me 2 times out of 3, then you are rated 100 points higher than me. If there is no "luck" in chess, how do you explain that?

Of course there are many other ways to get lucky. I might play Kasparov today and he might make a rare blunder against me, allowing me to win, while tomorrow he plays excellently against you and you lose. This is the variance of chess, which exists just like in poker. It's a fallacy to think that since chess is a game of complete information, that there is no luck, and no bluffing, etc.

Right.

You are not going to get a "proof". Any more than you can "prove" anything in life is profitable. If you accept hindsight as "proof", then you can prove that working in your office job is profitable, or playing poker is profitable. But if you're trying to predict the future, it can't be proven.

We can certainly prove certain things are +EV. And that really is what thinking poker is all about. But that is not the same thing as historically profitable. That is future prediction, which, as in quantum physics, is not provable. We can only calculate or guess at probabilities.

So the OP is simply asking the wrong questions and thinking incorrectly. He should be asking if poker can be +EV. The answer to that is very complicated.

I haven't seen anyone mention it yet, but of course the main reason this is true is the rake. It might seem intuitive if you don't know much about poker that it's a zero-sum game, but that's not true usually where poker is played for real money.

Of course there are other math reasons that could explain how only 15% of players could be winners even if there were no rake, but that's a discussion for another day.

Not just one, and not just politicians (judges also). Anyone who says this is either ignorant (in which case they should keep their mouth shut), stupid (in which case they should never have been elected), or corrupt (what can I say about that? - many people in places of authority lie to fulfill other agendas.)

Of course poker is a form of gambling! Luck is a huge factor in the short run. Over time, Experience and developed skills can make this form of gambling either less expensive if you are a loser or more profitable if you are a winner.

I think, you're right! I noticed that there is such a moment of the game that you absolutely do not influence.You just get bad cards. Yes you can play with it but it's better to throw cards off. There's a possibility of bluffing, and you can use it, but it's better to say: I fold! And your skill at that moment must stop and wait for the moment when comes your cards( good hand) with which you can play the game .

I plan to to prepare, then play my best and let the poker gods do the rest.