Luck vs. Skill in Poker and Baseball

Is poker gambling? Is Pluto a planet? Was Babe Ruth the greatest slugger of all time?

Arguments like these rage all the time, and they'll never be resolved – not because we're missing the key piece of information that would reveal the truth, but for the opposite reason. We have all the information, but we just don't have a good grasp of the question. We know Babe Ruth's slugging credentials, and those of Aaron, Oh, Maris, McGwire, and Bonds. It just so happens that there isn't an international governing body that pronounces judgment on the magnitude of greatness of sluggers; nor is there some law of nature, or simple formula. The same goes for what qualifies as gambling or a planet. You can consult dictionaries, encyclopedias, or the world's greatest experts, and some of them will voice strong opinions – but they're just opinions.

Some poker players are touchy about the idea that poker might be a game of luck, a gambler's game. That's understandable. After all, we didn't spend all of this time studying how to be lucky. But it's still a little hard to explain to the uninitiated why, if it's a game of skill, a tourist can sit down with talented players, play four hours of unbelievably bad poker, and walk away with enough cash to pay for his trip, including meals. So, people who don't play poker have the intuition that luck plays a larger role in poker outcomes than in most competitive sports.

And, they may be right. Those same tourists wouldn't have a chance of winning a set against Andre Agassi, or befuddling Garry Kasparov at chess. But then comes baseball season, and you have to wonder. The outcome of the 2001 World Series hinged on a few stunning plays in the bottom of the ninth inning of the seventh game. And some of the races for postseason privileges weren't decided until the last few games of the season. I'm hardly the first to make this observation, but, clearly, if 161 games aren't enough to tell you which is the better team, 162 games can't provide a completely reliable decision. Were the Phillies really just a hair less skillful than the Braves last year, or did some combination of good luck and bad luck conspire to make for a close race?

Most competitive activities have both luck and skill, in some balance. It serves little purpose to brand something "a game of luck" or "a game of skill." But it's well worth thinking about the relationship between skill and your results.

Poker and baseball actually have a lot in common. In both games, the more skilled competitor is generally more likely to win on a given day, but it's hardly guaranteed. In both poker and baseball, time sorts things out a bit. In baseball, 162 games tends to sort the best teams from the worst, although teams close in skill are still liable to have similar records. In poker, six months of play tends to treat those players who are beating the competition more favorably, although there's still too much variability to sort out players close in ability.

There is an interesting distinction between poker and baseball that bears on how we perceive the two games. In poker, the factors that contribute to variability in our outcomes – random shuffling and the behavior of other players – are mostly outside our influence. In baseball, with some qualifications, the pitcher controls the baseball and the batter controls the bat. Yet, when a batter guesses right, puts a good swing on the ball, and just happens to get under it a bit, can we attribute the outcome to a lack of skill at that moment? When the batter hits a hard line drive directly to an outfielder, it's hard to explain the outcome as anything but bad luck. When you hit lots of sharp line drives, these things happen sometimes – the same way the dealer occasionally gives your opponent his miracle card after all the chips are in. Poker and baseball seem different, because we can at least imagine a pitcher with near-perfect control, while poker players will always be subject to uncontrollable variability.

Luck certainly dominates short-term results in poker, although when I play poker against my nonpoker-playing friends and family, skill tends to dominate. I know what I'm doing, they don't, and I tend to end up with the chips. When I play poker against my poker-playing friends, luck tends to dominate the results, since we're relatively close in skill. In either case, I bring my own skill to bear on the game, and I feel like I'm playing more or less the same game. However, in one case, skill is the deciding factor, while in the other, it's luck.

Two evenly matched poker players playing heads up would essentially be pushing money back and forth in a random walk. The outcomes would be determined entirely by luck. Does that make it a game of luck? It certainly seems like gambling. Yet, each player has to exercise his skills to the utmost in order to achieve that level of zero expectation. If either player lapses for a few hands, he'll be playing at negative expectation. Does that make it a game of skill? It's hard to see that it matters what you call it. What about other casino games, like blackjack, craps, and video poker? Undeniably, you can make good and bad decisions at these games, even if you're playing with negative expectation. Your short-term outcomes will be highly variable. If you turned off your skill, you'd tend to do more poorly, just as you would in baseball, tic-tac-toe, or poker (at least in the long run).

For my own purposes, I think of skill as something I work to develop and enjoy exercising, even if it takes effort. Poker certainly qualifies, but it's also a game played in casinos, for money, and one in which you have relatively little assurance about your short-term fortunes. So, I still think it's gambling. Some poker players believe that if you're a gambler, you're a loser. They may be right, but merely putting a label on the game doesn't affect how I play, so I'm not too worried.

So, I've decided not to get into any more arguments about this. The next time anyone asks me if poker is more skill or luck, I'll tell him what I know. It takes a lot of knowledge and ability to play well. You can get better through practice and/or study, and worse through alcohol. Short-term results are highly variable, while long-term results are more reliable (at this point, I'll pull out a little chart plotting standard deviation of outcomes against hours played). And, you can win at it. Beyond that, I don't see that there's much at stake in labeling it one way or the other.