5 ms·

I have to disagree. Moneymaker, a complete nobody, winning the World Series of Poker.

• sejje 12y ago
  Being a complete nobody is not reflective of one's skill. That said, luck is the primary influence of outcome given a small enough time frame. It's also possible to have your mistakes "fixed" by luck. Moneymaker was not better than Farha, I'll give you that.
  • lasermike026 12y ago
    Watching Moneymaker win and then a series of others unknowns win convinced me that poker is a game of luck. Why are real rounders not winning?
    • panorama 12y ago
      They are. Overwhelmingly, in fact. You are almost certainly looking at a ridiculously small sample (probably just WSOP Main Events, of which the past several have had legitimately skilled winners).
• ssharp 12y ago
  Poker tournaments, especially picking a single one, are not a great way to really illustrate that poker is a game of skill. A book like Kill Everyone [1] puts forth a pretty reasonable tournament strategy where you try and accumulate a lot of chips early on and then start making risky moves in later rounds based your cards, position, and relative chip count. Tournaments are played this way because the blinds and antes increase faster than the average chip stack increases. Once you get to the point where you have to make risky moves, you open up the luck angle a lot. The skill comes from knowing the probabilities and making plays with positive expected value over the long run, even if it means eliminating yourself from the tournament due to chance. But in the short-run, a relatively unskilled player could make similar decisions, get lucky and win the risky plays, and do very well. [1]http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1935396307/ http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1935396307/