Studies Show Poker is Mainly Skill Not Luck

The heated debate of "Skill versus Luck" in poker gained the spotlight again, as an article published in Science Daily last week presented two poker-related studies conducted by Michael DeDonno, a doctoral candidate from Case Western Reserve University, which provide empirical evidence that skill, not luck, dominates the game of poker.

DeDonno first published his findings in an article entitled, "Poker is a Skill," written with Douglas Detterman, a psychologist at the Cleveland Ohio University. It caught the attention of the Gaming Law Review journal, which has been examining the luck-skill debate and recently published psychologists' findings.

At first DeDonno set out to determine if there was a correlation between intelligence and the ability to play the game, but his focus soon shifted to the luck-skill issue.

Two poker-related studies were conducted with students who, overall, had little experience playing poker according to DeDonno.

THE FIRST STUDY

In the first study, 41 university students play eight games totalling 200 hands of turbo Texas Hold'em, a computerised simulation of ten-player hold'em poker. Half of the students in the first group were given charts that ranked the two-card combinations from best to the worst and also learned that professional poker players typically play about 15 percent of the hands dealt them. The other group was only given background on the history of poker with no strategies.

DeDonno found that students given some strategies to make decisions did better than those without the strategies. Before starting the study, 64 percent of the students personally opined that winning at poker was 50 percent luck.

"If it had been pure luck in winning, then the strategies would not have made a difference for the two groups," DeDonno stated.

THE SECOND STUDY

To statistically verify results from the first study, students in DeDonno's second study played 720 hands. Again the group was divided into those provided with strategies and those with just a history of playing poker.

While all students improved their playing with practice over the large number of hands, the group given strategies continued to do better than those without the added information.

DeDonna also found that students reduced the average number of hands played at the beginning (27) to 15 hands after given strategies, which improved their games and validated that "fewer hands does result in improved performance."

The Science Daily article noted that in DeDonno's final analysis, skill wins out in playing poker.

DeDonno commented that using poker strategies has some real life applications in such areas as investments and buying a home where partial information is available. He also discovered that the poker simulation has applications in psychological testing for decision making and risk taking.

SIMILAR VIEW AS GLOBAL POKER STRATEGIC THINKING SOCIETY??

Wonder if DeDonno has spoken with Charles Nesson, the Harvard Law Professor who founded the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society? The Society "views poker as an exceptional game of skill that can be used as a powerful teaching tool at all levels of academia and in secondary education."

"Poker teaches many lessons that are transferable to the challenges of life, including strategic understanding of risk, resource management and self control," says Nesson, a tenured professor on the Harvard faculty for close to forty years.

Read Related Article: