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 Originally Posted by Laeelin
When was the last time you heard people moaning about how unlucky they are in spades?
GREAT GREAT GREAT point!!!
How to you measure/quantify one's poker 'skills'? That is, by no means, a trivial question! There are many dimensions to poker skill! Getting your money in when you have "the best of it" is not a good description of poker 'skill'. Being able to determine WHEN you have the best of it is a better, albeit still limited, one. Let's not forget that you can still take down pots when you have the worst of it too!
There is only one good way to tell how good you are at poker....
$$$$
I don't think anyone is suggesting that $$$ is not how we measure results in poker. And yes, over a long enough period ("the long run"), theoretically & practically, $$-results would have to be a measure of how good you are too (i.e. long-term $$-results are a measure of the cumulative application of your poker skills). However, the original point in this post was that in reality, $$ flows to and away from players as a result of both skill and luck.
I have to somwhat disagree though when you say "There is only one way to tell how good you are at poker" .. $$$. Clearly, there's truth to that statement when you are looking at the "long run". BUT I could sit and watch a B&M game of poker for as little as one hour and quite easily tell you which players are 'good' and which ones are 'bad'. But that wouldn't be by watching their stacks shrink and/or grow. I'd be looking at how the players seem to display "skill & understanding of the game" such as: starting hand selection based on position & action etc, hand & board reading capabilities, player reading, seeing if they know when to bail in small pots, when to protect their hands in large pots, their propensity to call when they clearly have a raise or fold situation, tendency to cold-call, use of positional advantage, knowing when to go for over-calls, when to CR, knowing when and how to pump a pot because they have a large pot equity edge, etc, etc, etc.
We've been trying to discuss how one would go about independently measuring skill versus luck. In other words, is there a way to decouple these factors some how so that you can say poker is this much skill and this much luck? To me, this is completely an academic question (with a likely answer of 'no you can't decouple them, don't even try you stupid monkey'), but still interesting to think about. In order to even begin to accomplish this, you'd have to have some other means to measure skill in dimensions that are completely independent of the luck factors, and using $$-results doesn't accomplish that. However, looking at a player's understanding and mastery (or lack thereof) of some of the tactics and skills I listed above, does; at least to some extent.
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Poker............Luck VS Skill?
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