Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is poker a game of chance or skill?

math.tau.ac.il

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 42 posts

Re: Is poker a game of chance or skill?

#31

Post by Natsu »

ThomPete wrote: post #3
tptacek wrote: post #2

Short summary, for anyone who already knows the basics of poker: yes, the cards are random, but everyone's bets are a function of their statistical competance and their ability to make inferences from other people's bets, and therefore poker is a game of skill. It's a fine article but it appears to contain very little new insight.

Wouldn't that mean that it is a game both of skill and of luck?

I think the better question is how much of each? 50/50 is a lot different than 70/30, but I wonder if there's any good way to measure it?

After all, like so many games, the random variation can mask the effects of skill and you can only measure your skill relative to that of your opponents (so a good player against newbies might destroy them, while a superb player against good ones might only get a little ahead).

Re: Is poker a game of chance or skill?

#32

Post by wake_up_sticky »

Imagining games to have a "skill component" and a "luck component" is the wrong way to conceptualize games which involve randomness. A much better way conceptualize these games is to consider how many "units" (games, matches, hands, tournaments, whatever) must be played before the distribution of players by (score/place/points) becomes indistinguishable from that expected based on the players' ability levels.

For instance, if a GM rated 2800 plays a GM rated 2700, he may lose. In fact, he may lose several games in a row. However, if the two play a 30-game match, the probability that the 2700-rated player will win is very low.

Now, if you take the best heads up no limit hold em player in the world and have him play a series of hands against the hundredth-best heads up no limit hold em player in the world, he may very well lose the first hand. He may very well be down after the first thousand hands. But if they play, say, 1,000,000 hands, the probability that the weaker player will be up on the stronger player is as low as, if not lower than, the probability that the 2700 will beat the 2800 in their match.

It's not about "skill" versus "luck"--the question is simply, "How many (hands/games/matches/etc.) must be played before the probability that the weaker player (has won/is ahead/etc.) becomes sufficiently small?

Re: Is poker a game of chance or skill?

#33

Post by tansey »

aquateen wrote: post #30
tansey wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the paper makes some naive assumptions. However, you seem to be equating poker to chess, which is a common but erroneous analogy. Poker is a MUCH tougher game (dozens of orders of magnitude, depending on the variant) than chess. We have no idea how close to optimal any human is at the game. Similarly, computer opponents can only play well in very limited settings like heads-up, fixed-limit Hold'em, where…

I am not sure how you quantify toughness, but this is the worst use of "orders of magnitude" I've ever seen. More so, since I have spent a nontrivial percentage of my life playing both games.

Size and complexity of the search space (i.e., the game tree). The tree is several orders of magnitude larger for poker than for chess.

I've spent a non-trivial percentage of my life both playing and researching AI for poker. See http://poker.cs.ualberta.ca/publications/billings.phd.pdf for an initial discussion on the differences between the 2 games' search trees. He notes that for 2-player, limit hold-em, the game tree consists of 1,179,000,604,565,715,751 nodes. The tree expands exponentially as you add players and different betting sizes. For no-limit and other real-valued variants like pot-limit, the game has an effectively infinite search space.

Re: Is poker a game of chance or skill?

#34

Post by aquateen »

tansey wrote: post #33
aquateen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure how you quantify toughness, but this is the worst use of "orders of magnitude" I've ever seen. More so, since I have spent a nontrivial percentage of my life playing both games.

Size and complexity of the search space (i.e., the game tree). The tree is several orders of magnitude larger for poker than for chess. I've spent a non-trivial percentage of my life both playing and researching AI for poker. See http://poker.cs.ualberta.ca/publications/billings.phd.pdf for an initial discussion on the differences between the 2 games' search trees. He notes that for 2-player, limit hold-em, the game…

If I recall, there are more possible chess games than atoms in the universe. So even if you were to quantify toughness as number of possible decisions, it would still be completely off. However, in both those games, a lot of the plays would be ridiculous.

It's easier to try and measure toughness by the time/effort it takes to be competent or the best. In this case I would say chess is hands down much tougher.

Re: Is poker a game of chance or skill?

#35

Post by tansey »

aquateen wrote: post #34
tansey wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Size and complexity of the search space (i.e., the game tree). The tree is several orders of magnitude larger for poker than for chess. I've spent a non-trivial percentage of my life both playing and researching AI for poker. See http://poker.cs.ualberta.ca/publications/billings.phd.pdf for an initial discussion on the differences between the 2 games' search trees. He notes that for 2-player, limit hold-em, the game…

If I recall, there are more possible chess games than atoms in the universe. So even if you were to quantify toughness as number of possible decisions, it would still be completely off. However, in both those games, a lot of the plays would be ridiculous. It's easier to try and measure toughness by the time/effort it takes to be competent or the best. In this case I would say chess is hands down much tougher.

Sure, the number of possible moves is huge in both games. However, it's more about the number of relevant moves at a given game state. Alpha-beta algorithms for chess can do a much more thorough search than their poker-specific extensions and related methods like MCMC.

I suppose if you're measuring difficulty of a game as how difficult it is for a human player to beat the current masters, then that seems a little unfair. Poker has been around for less than 200 years and the current variants are less than 100 years old. Chess has been around since the late 1400s according to the Wikipedia article. There has been a lot more research and time spent on chess, and the community is consequently much more mature and skilled.

Re: Is poker a game of chance or skill?

#36

Post by rubinelli »

Natsu wrote: post #31
ThomPete wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't that mean that it is a game both of skill and of luck?

I think the better question is how much of each? 50/50 is a lot different than 70/30, but I wonder if there's any good way to measure it? After all, like so many games, the random variation can mask the effects of skill and you can only measure your skill relative to that of your opponents (so a good player against newbies might destroy them, while a superb player against good ones might only get a little ahead).

There isn't a simple, definite answer to this question because the skill of the players affect how much luck determines the outcome. Unskilled players are much more likely to bluff, call bluffs with weak hands, and over or underestimate their hands. In a low stakes, beginners game, there's enough variability that one player with a little more skill won't have much of an advantage. In a professional tournament, the best players show up in the top spots time and again.

Re: Is poker a game of chance or skill?

#37

Post by gte910h »

tptacek wrote: post #2

Short summary, for anyone who already knows the basics of poker: yes, the cards are random, but everyone's bets are a function of their statistical competance and their ability to make inferences from other people's bets, and therefore poker is a game of skill. It's a fine article but it appears to contain very little new insight.

It's actually both. A game of chance is one is which outcomes are mostly/strongly based on...chance. A game of skill is one in which skill is an influencer on the results. Poker is both.

Re: Is poker a game of chance or skill?

#38

Post by mistermann »

rubinelli wrote: post #36
Natsu wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the better question is how much of each? 50/50 is a lot different than 70/30, but I wonder if there's any good way to measure it? After all, like so many games, the random variation can mask the effects of skill and you can only measure your skill relative to that of your opponents (so a good player against newbies might destroy them, while a superb player against good ones might only get a little ahead).

There isn't a simple, definite answer to this question because the skill of the players affect how much luck determines the outcome. Unskilled players are much more likely to bluff, call bluffs with weak hands, and over or underestimate their hands. In a low stakes, beginners game, there's enough variability that one player with a little more skill won't have much of an advantage. In a professional tournament, the be…

Exactly...the new internet based players are, generally speaking, very loose players, and have really change the game in the non internet world. And I'd reckon that a very large percentage of entrants into physical tournaments now are internet trained players, and if you have a large enough % of these people starting, and all (hyperbole) of them "swinging for the fences", a lot of them are going to get through just on luck, but different ones each time.

Whereas, you will generally see at least one or two of the top 20-30 "old school" people at the final table of any major tournament.

Re: Is poker a game of chance or skill?

#39

Post by mistermann »

tansey wrote: post #35
aquateen wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I recall, there are more possible chess games than atoms in the universe. So even if you were to quantify toughness as number of possible decisions, it would still be completely off. However, in both those games, a lot of the plays would be ridiculous. It's easier to try and measure toughness by the time/effort it takes to be competent or the best. In this case I would say chess is hands down much tougher.

Sure, the number of possible moves is huge in both games. However, it's more about the number of relevant moves at a given game state. Alpha-beta algorithms for chess can do a much more thorough search than their poker-specific extensions and related methods like MCMC. I suppose if you're measuring difficulty of a game as how difficult it is for a human player to beat the current masters, then that seems a little unf…

Also, don't forget that when you're playing chess, you can see your opponents pieces on the board.

Re: Is poker a game of chance or skill?

#40

Post by tansey »

mistermann wrote: post #39
tansey wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the number of possible moves is huge in both games. However, it's more about the number of relevant moves at a given game state. Alpha-beta algorithms for chess can do a much more thorough search than their poker-specific extensions and related methods like MCMC. I suppose if you're measuring difficulty of a game as how difficult it is for a human player to beat the current masters, then that seems a little unf…

Also, don't forget that when you're playing chess, you can see your opponents pieces on the board.

Right, that would be what I meant by the poker-specific extensions. Most chess algorithms use minimax to search the game tree. The UoA team has extended the basic minimax algorithm to other variants like miximax which can handle partial information and stochastic outcomes.
Post reply on HN