Royal Flush Poker

For me, you can only ever use your skill at poker to stem the tide of bad luck for so long. If you have consistently bad luck during a session of poker, your skill will only determine how long you survive, or how much you lose. Good play will always minimise losses, just as good play will always maximise profits when your luck is strong.

Decisions you make will always alter what happens in poker and so there is a great element of skill involved in the game for certain.

Whether luck outweighs skill or skill outweighs luck in the game is always under debate, but we can safely assume that the mixture of these things is what constitutes the game of poker. You certainly need some good luck to win a tournament, and we all experience bad luck and good in the course of a lengthy poker session. Because of this, I would have to say that skill is more important in my opinion. Unless you are already all in preflop, skill always gives you a chance to make a great fold or a call. Skill can mould good or average luck into a good chipstack, but relentless bad luck cannt be changed.

Therefore, I would have to say that poker is a mixture of both. But I feel the mixture is slightly more in favour of skill. The fact that all good and bad luck evens out over time supports this fact, because skill is a constant and will override the good and bad luck as it evens out in the course of time.

As players we can only play our best at all times, and if you don’t let bad luck affect your play, this should prove a profitable endeavour.