The importance of psychological preparation in poker

Poker is a game of luck and skill

A popular debate among poker players is whether poker is a game of luck or skill. Every hand dealt is like a fresh start and, according to logic, the aim is to try to win it. The winner of any hand is determined by chance. The cards on the table fall randomly, both yours and your opponents'. A skilled player can do nothing to increase his chances of winning, but he can make his opponent fold.

If you look deeper, you can see a hidden element of skill. Poker is not about winning the most hands, it's about winning the most money. If you look at the structure of poker, trying to win every hand is a stupid idea. Every hand has a winner, so it's better to set your own range of hands and play the hands where you think you are the favourite. A player who tries to win every time will quickly lose a lot of money in the process.

This shows that stronger players tend to win fewer hands but more money. Indeed, it is hard to find another game where the best players win the fewest hands. This is a unique aspect of poker that can make it seem like a game of luck.

But poker also has a big element of skill. Players have to make decisions at various points when playing a new hand. They have to analyse all possible clues (such as their own hand, the cards on the table, their opponent's actions) and they have to decide and make the best move. Where there is decision, there is room for error, and where there is room for error, there is naturally skill.

In the short term, success is king

Although poker is a game of both luck and skill, it can be very difficult to find the skill element in a short period of time. To win the pot in poker, you need to have the best hand on the turn of the cards or force all your opponents to fold. You can increase your chances of winning by forcing as many players to fold as possible before the cards are turned over, but when the cards are turned over, it is the player with the better hand who wins, not the player with more skill. There will be many times when you can win big pots by forcing all your opponents to fold, but obviously this will only happen when none of your opponents have good hands. In short, the outcome of an individual hand in poker is largely based on luck.

As we have already discussed, skill in poker is losing less with losing cards and winning more with winning cards, but this is not an accurate conclusion when analysing just one hand. Let's say you are playing No-Limit Hold'em and you push all your chips with a strong hand like A-K against a weak hand like 7-2. The odds of A-K being the best hand on the river are roughly 2:1. That's a pretty big advantage, but it doesn't guarantee a win. It will be quite common to make a good decision and be punished for it, or on the other hand to make a bad decision and be rewarded.

Here's another example. Imagine that you have been playing for a whole week and have had 100 flush draws in that week. In Hold'em poker, if you catch a flush buy after three community cards, you have a 2:1 chance of completing it on the river. So, on average, you will fill 33 flushes out of 100. If you are lucky, you may fill the suit 40 times out of 100, and if you are unlucky, you may only fill 25 times out of 100.

In the long term, skill is king

The good news for the winning player is that the luck factor will almost disappear when playing poker for quite a long time. Mathematicians know this intuitively, but if you have a hard time with maths, imagine flipping a coin. In every coin toss there is a 50% chance of a number and a 50% chance of a coat of arms. If you toss the coin 10 times, you expect both the number and the coat of arms to come up 5 times. Of course, there is a good chance that e.g. the Coat of Arms will come up 6 times, but there is even a 17% chance that the Coat of Arms will come up 7 or more times. But what happens if we flip the coin 100 times? Calculating, we can see that the probability of getting 70 coats of arms out of 100 tosses is only 0.004%. So, the more times you repeat a random action, the lower the probability of an unfavourable result.

This mathematical theory, often referred to as the "Law of Large Numbers", has important implications for poker. The more hands you play, the fewer the chances of success or failure. If you play enough hands, the luck factor virtually disappears and your results are influenced by skill.

Where is the best place to play poker?