In my experience, there are periods in poker when you are dealt good cards, and there are periods when you get really bad cards. It's how you bet, bluff and otherwise play when you get the good cards, and how you survive when you get the bad cards, that determines your success. Plus, every player needs to develop a strategy that capitalizes on their strengths. For example, some people are great bluffers, some people know how to set traps, and some people are brilliant at calculating the percentages of possible hands.

There's a lot more luck in poker than tennis. Plus no physical training. It definitely requires skill. A lot less than tennis.

Skilled players win in the long run, but the long run is longer than most people think, especially because of the house 'rake'. The house takes 5% or so of every pot above a minimum size and the effect is like brokerage commissions on stock market day traders. I win consistently online, but the total house rake is about 25% of my pre-rake winnings.

In short, without rake you obviously have to be better than a 50th percentile player to win, and if you're a 51st percentile player the long run may be most of a human lifetime. With a 5% rake I estimate you actually have to be a 75th percentile or better player to win long term. But at least you CAN beat the rake, as opposed to an absolute house edge in the other games.

Also, I think a pro's advantage vs. an average, reasonably competent player is only comparable to the typical house edge at, say, blackjack or craps, so over a session/tourney situation of several hundred hands it's quite possible for a pro to get busted out by Joe Average with only a relatively small assist from Lady Luck.

The Poker world has several players that have won 8 or more world titles. Can you imagine an 8 time champion roulette player, or an 8 time slot machine champion. The only explanation is the skill factor. Sure last year's winner can get knocked out in the first round, but that is the luck component. Sometimes you just don't get the cards and your opponent does.

I think it is 90% luck and 10% skill. Even if you get a pair of good cards, it does not mean anything except you can really put a good bet on them. Everything else depends on the forthcoming cards.

It's not that complicated a question. If you play one hand, luck weighs extremely heavily. Conversely, if you play an infinite number of hands, luck is completely removed from the equation.

As the number of hands dealt approaches infinity, the variation between cards dealt to different players approaches zero. As variation in cards approaches zero, the only thing left to determine who wins is skill.

It's in the realm between one hand and infinite hands where people argue about luck vs. skill. And obviously, since infinity isn't attainable, there is always luck.

What people are failing to mention as a third variable is the fuzzy human perceptual instinct. Does luck say you have a good hand and skill say you should raise, yet that little voice inside tells you to fold? Anybody can learn to weather a storm of bad cards, and anyone can learn to raise or fold based upon situational probabilities. But the great players are separated by their ability to "just know" at just the right time when appearances are to be ignored.

It is a game of skill and luck. The skill is not primarily in the understanding of odds or position, but in being able to read people and being able to act for others.

If a talented player can win 51% of the time compared to an opponent's 49%, the odds that the opponent will go broke over the long run is essentially 100% - provided that each bets are only a small fraction of the total amount originally held by both players.

Think of the roulette wheel. If you have $100, and you bet it out in $1 bets until you either hit $200 or lose everything... well, odds are close to 100% that you'll lose everything.

But if you put it all on black, odds are 48% to 52% (or so, depending on the table). If you simply saw a small sample output (say, 10 or 20 outcomes) without knowing these odds in advance, you would have a tough time knowing whether the player or house holds the advantage.

I think this is why it's difficult to percieve the talented player's advantage if you only watch a few rounds. But over the long haul, the advantage of the skilled player is close to 100%.

In my experience many players who claim poker is mostly luck are the ones that lose at it most of the time. Even without a good knowledge of math, you can use simple logic to solve whether poker is mostly luck or not. If poker was mostly luck, how is it that so many players win enough games to make a living on it. They must be the luckiest people in the world!

However, the element of luck in poker is greater then say, tennis or chess. It is big enough to where big name pros will lose in early rounds once in a while. However, I guarentee you, if you take 25 top pros and 75 average poker players, and pit them against each other for 100 tournements, to where the top 25% get paid, I guarentee you that by the end of that 100 tournemnets the pros will have made money and most of the other players will have lost money. This would be impossible if the game were mostly luck.

Assuming one has at least miild intelligence and understands the basics of playing poker, which I estimate takes a month, then poker is all about luck. In particular, cash game poker is all about luck. Remember, the "luck" may even out but not the dollars associated with that luck. If you get lucky when you are involved in small pots and equally unlucky when you're involved in larger hands, then your luck will even out but you'll be seriously broke! Pros that get sponsorships need to claim that "poker is no game of luck" but in reality they know it better than anyone. They just can't say it or they'll lose sponsorships. They'll say "How come you see so many familiar faces at final tables?" Well, you don't. I watch a lot of poker, very rarely do you see the same players. And amateurs win most of the tournaments, including the biggest one, the WSOP Main Event. You can play great all night and suffer one bad beat and be out of a tournament. And that's if your good luck outweighs your bad luck by a lot! Don't believe the hype, poker is ALL LUCK. I play a LOT of poker (I still enjoy it) and watch a lot also and I'm highly intelligent, especialy mathematically and logically, and I tell you it's LUCK.

Some of these comments are so absurd. However, one is right on the money -- the losers call it luck. The winners know it's skill. Of course, in the short term, anything can happen. But there is way too much stress on mathematics here. The real difference between winners and losers is knowing how most people bet certain situations, picking up tells, using psychological (verbal) warfare, managing a bankroll, not going on tilt, and setting traps based on how particular people bet. If you don't understand this, then you either don't play/understand the game, or you lose at it.

Cash Games require more skill than tournaments. Not to say tournaments don't require skill. It's just that the rising blinds can force your play in the later rounds. Plus, there's no chance for negotiations (a good way to avoid bad beats in a cash game). I'm shocked someone wrote that Cash Games have a higher element of luck. Absolutely clueless.

And as far as pros not winning WSOP -- there are 6500 players! They're comlpetely outnumbered. Of course poker isn't 100% skill, but over the long run it's about 75-80%. There have been MANY times when I see someone at the table and I know after ten minutes that they will eventually get felted (lose all his/her money). The reasons -- this person is: readable, a calling station, easily intimidated. These are not elements of chance. And, getting back to WSOP, Stu Ungar won three (two in a row '80 and '81). Doyle Brunson won twice and came in third a few years laters. Johnny Chan also won back-to-back in the late '80s. He is also a prime example of skill. He doesn't gamble. He waits for premium hands and capitalizes. Which reminds me that patience is another key factor.

And finally, the pros love to see 'tv pros' sit down at the cash games: Helmuth (no clue how to bet), Matusow (goes on tilt easily), Shieky (folds easily). They want these players at the table because they're LESS SKILLED!

Losers think it's luck. Winners know it's skill. Check career winnings for Allan Cunningham, Johnny Chan, Doyle Brunson, Gus Hansen (and I'm not talking about sponsors).

If you think it's luck, I want you at my table. :)

I have been gambling for a long time, on sports and house casino games, as well as poker of late. As far as this query about how much of poker involves luck vs. skill is concerned, there is something else to consider I have yet to see mentioned by previous posters. Some ppl just seem to have more luck than others. I have seen it time and again. I know that theoretically, the math dictates that every1's luck in poker will even out over-time, but the same is true in other games as well. So take ur average large lottery. How can any1 explain why some ppl have been struck by lightning more than once in their lives, whereas others who have bought many more tickets even have never so much as won a subsidiary prize let alone a jackpot. Don't know why this is, some might say karma or something, but I prefer a more scientific explanation. It's called variance. No1 can predict how LONG a streak of bad-luck or good-luck might last before it changes. Thus 2 ppl could play poker for 50 years each, and 1 player could have taken way more bad-beats over that time period than the other w/o ever even approaching being even with said other during that time period. I call this the luck-factor, and u can look at it like a scale of 1-10. Some ppl are closer to the 1 and some to the 10. Ever wonder how, if ur luck factor is brutally low like mine is (I'd say I'm between a 1 and 3 on this scale), that u rarely hit draws when u have 20 outs, but other players seem to hit 3-outers or less against u with regularity? Therefore, I think that there is much more luck involved in poker than most ppl think. However, this is not to say that those with a low luck-factor can't win at poker, they just have to be a LOT more skilled and even more important, a LOT more patient than those players with a much higher luck factor. Just play really tight and controlled and trap a lot, be cautious and don't chase much. I know that this is the only way I win regularly (especially online). This really stinks as far as I'm concerned, because I would LOVE to be 1 of those luck-boxes, it would make things soooooo much easier lol