As a result, according to the study, Texas Hold’em can be seen as a game of 88% skill and not predominated by chance. Overall, the best hand actually won the pot a mere 12% of the time. The other 49.7% of the time, the player with the best hand folded before showdown. In the remaining 24.3% of hands, the player who held the best five-card hand only won 50.3% of the time. The results showed that 75.7% of hands never even made it to showdown. Is it really possible for someone to be unlucky for over 25,000 games played? Likewise, what are the chances that someone is on a heater for 60,000 games?Ī study using data from 57 events during the 2010 WSOP, which covered 32,000 players, showed that “previously classified ‘skilled’ players outperformed ‘unskilled’ players by a large margin.” The “skilled” players achieved an average ROI of over 30% while “unskilled” players attained -15% ROI.Īnother study, taken in 2009, compared over 100,000,000 hands of Hold’em on PokerStars.

Poker, on the other hand, is a game full of strategy and decisions, both good and bad, and it very easy to intentionally lose all of your money.įrom our recent two-part editorial series, Greatest Artworks Created by Online Results ( part 1 & part 2), all the proof you need lies in these poker graphs.

You can’t play craps, roulette, or baccarat “wrong”-every decision you make has the same approximate expected value-and you can’t intentionally lose a bet on the roulette wheel. No one ever criticized another player for using a sub-optimal strategy when tossing dice. Show them this list and knock some sense into their head. I’m sure you know of a loudmouth friend who complains that poker is just a “stupid game of luck.” Don’t worry, we all do. They compare it to games of chance, when the opposite can’t be more apparent.

Most people, the US government included, do not have a proper understanding and appreciation of poker. They use their skills to minimize luck as much as possible.” While there is no denying that luck can play a significant part in the game (at least in the short term), good players, as stated by David Sklansky, “are at war with luck. Is poker a game of skill or luck? Does it really take skill to win? Isn’t it just a gamble, like roulette or the slot machines? These age-old questions have dogged poker since its inception, and I want to set the record straight.

Lucky flop poker