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Is Poker 100% Luck?

Poker is one of the most popular card games and is gaining more global popularity. With the number of tournaments and individuals making fantastic amounts of money, the game has captured everyone’s imagination. While everyone would love to sit at a table and rake in the money, that isn’t always the case. To consistently have a positive experience playing poker, let alone win a hand, much less an international event, one needs to hone several skills – both soft and trainable.

A typical player has played dozens, if not hundreds, of private poker games before planning to play internationally or nationally. But even so, one question rankles the minds of people who follow poker casually and causes legal issues for everyone involved in the game: Is Poker 100% Luck?

The answer to this question is simple, but it will be palatable only after the evidence is shown. Simply put, no, Poker is not 100% luck. There’s a lot that points to the game not being about luck, and here are some aspects to consider:

#1 Luck alone doesn’t help against 7000+ competitors

A typical tournament has more than a handful of events—anywhere from 20 to 50. These events have between 100 and 1000 entries. Even if we take the least number, that’s 100 entries; luck is definitely not the only factor that can decide a winner twenty times. And 100 is a pretty small number. In 2024, Richard Marquez shipped the Main Event of the Manila Megastack 20, among 512 entries, taking home 3,713,920 PHP. A typical event, like the USOP Taiwan Main Event in 2024, saw a staggering 1100 entries. Those aren’t very great numbers, according to poker statisticians, too; after all, Estrellas Poker Tour Main Event of the 2024 PokerStars EPT Barcelona had 7,138 entries. 

#2 People wouldn’t be paying to learn strategies if only luck were needed to win

While several players are in the news for shipping events or even being on the money lists, several experienced poker players routinely announce that they are mentoring poker players to improve their game. To date, nobody has charged money to transfer their luck to someone else, so we can safely say that these individuals are imparting knowledge—including strategies that would help a person win or at least not lose huge amounts in a game.

One of the basic strategies and skills for performing well at the felts is keeping a ‘poker face’—an expressionless face that doesn’t reveal anything about a particular individual’s thoughts. The concept is so famous that Lady Gaga made a song about it.

Luck doesn’t play any role in a person’s ability to keep a poker face for extended amounts of time. Keeping one’s cards to oneself (literally and figuratively) is so important in poker that some popular poker players wear sunglasses and other props to hide their expressions at play.

#3 Luck plays a role in success, but skill gets you there

Let’s take a non-sport example to elucidate this point and prove that skill and luck exist in all walks of life. Let’s assume we own a motorcycle and plan to take one of those long tours that are instantly Instagrammable. We would be lucky if the roads were smooth, there was less traffic, and we didn’t have breakdowns. However, we need the skill of driving a motorcycle through any terrain and in any weather conditions. We need the aptitude to understand when to drive and when to ride, and we need the wherewithal to understand what to do in the various scenarios that the events will throw at us. 

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ALSO READ: JioCinema Announces India’s First Poker Learning Series – Poker Masterclass

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Lastly, let’s look at the various steps of the game. Let’s say four players and a dealer are playing the game. The dealer deals four cards to the four players, which means sixteen actions have already taken place, seventeen, if you count the action of the dealer stopping the activity of dealing. These sixteen actions are just the beginning of hundreds of actions that go on for days together.

For example, an event at an international tournament could last days. Would a person be so lucky to have Lady Luck all this while just playing poker? Why wouldn’t they stand for an election or the lottery? The lottery is far more effortless and requires almost zero travel.

We provide information and updates about the poker and real-money gaming industry, from tournament itineraries to winners lists and interviews with winners. We also provide information about any federal and corporate decisions that might impact the industry. For more updates from the poker world, keep reading GutshotMagazine.com. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Telegram

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