Well written piece on expected value. Something he doesn't get into is the shape of the skill factor There's quotes out there about how poker is 9x% luck, & th

Well written piece on expected value. Something he doesn't get into is the shape of the skill factor There's quotes out there about how poker is 9x% luck, & that last stretch of skill is a game of chess. What they're talking about is skill cap. By this we mean that poker is such a hard game that not even the best players are playing it perfectly. See a recent AI Pluribus for some articles on how AI's pushing this game Essentially it's about having a 3d graph with the three labels: X: Player1's skill Y: Player2's skill Z: Player1's chance to beat Player2 Issue: skill may vary with different strategies, so that you end up in rock-paper-scissors scenarios Then there's a function over how much effort is required for a player to increase their skill. This is how we get games described as "easy to learn, hard to master" they're games with high skill caps but which a player should be able to quickly have more than single digit odds against an experienced player An interesting thing with this 3d graph is that you can make transforms on it while treating the game itself as a blackbox. For example, in StarCraft players will often play Bo3 in tournaments. Plenty of commentators will go on about how this let's people bring a variety of strategies etc etc, but all it really does is avoid letting a single map's balance be decisive & exaggerates the advantage of skill. If you have a 70% winrate against someone, in a Bo3 you have an 80% winrate against them This ends up creating interesting decision making scenarios when one can choose strategies which shift the role of luck in a game. It may make sense to play a strategy where even with perfect execution you only have a 40% winrate if the skillcap for that strategy is low enough & your opponent is better. This sort of thing makes it that there can be a bit of a divide where players are stuck at a 40% winrate against players who are better than them until they've become skilled enough to rationally play the higher skillcap strategy