An extract from Ghosts at the Table

This extract is taken from Des Wilson's book, "Ghosts at the Table" - released on October the 4th.

Is poker a game of luck or a game of skill ? The anti-poker forces condemn it as gambling - a game of chance. From this, they believe, the innocent should be protected ; the poker world believes – indeed knows – that it is a game of chance AND skill, but above all it is a game of skill…

Somehow this has to be independently and properly examined… the poker world will not fear proper inquiry. It knows there is only one answer.

Of course, luck is a factor; every poker players has experienced bad beats … evastating, shocking upsets when an opponent lands a card that is in breath-taking defiance of the odds. . In hold’em, you can cleverly position yourself to win, you can correctly back the probabilities, but you cannot deal yourself the card you need to clinch it. Sometimes its not just one hand: sometimes you can have an appalling run of bad luck, for hours, days, weeks. It’s not just about poor cards; when you find yourself with a potentially winning hand, someone always lands a better one…or alternatively, you get a 100 per cent winner but no-one on the table has a decent hand and they all fold, leaving you with no profit on a hand you’ve waited for all day. Oh, it can be cruel.

(Think back to T.J.Cloutier in 2000; at last on the brink of being world champion – probably his last chance – and on the last card of the last hour of the last of many days of play there are only three cards in the pack that can deny him …and one of them comes down on the river. That’s a bad beat.)

No poker player will deny that on any given day in any given game any given player can win. The cards fall his or her way so favourably that even incompetence or inexperience cannot stop them winning. Oh yes, luck has its day.

BUT – and this is the point –over time the luck evens out and skill takes over. Furthermore, with skill you can minimise the luck factor and also minimise how much you lose when you do lose. You can play 100 hands, lose 20 and win one, but still be a winner, because of your ability to get away from potential disasters and maximise the income from the one success. Keeping out of trouble is one of the most valuable skills you can have; to keep control of events so that bad days are not too bad.

But, oh, there is so much that experience and knowledge and skill bring to the game. In hold’em, there’s choosing the right cards to play, reading what the community cards tell you, correctly assessing by their behaviour and betting what other players are likely to do, betting to either control a potential loss or maximise a win. You need mathematical skills at least adequate to work out the odds of a hand winning and the value that lies in playing a hand, the concentration to take the correct decisions at each point, the psychological skills to judge what other players will do or can be made to do, the discipline to do the sensible thing (and that often means folding a hand you desperately want to play because the odds don’t favour it), and heart – the courage to make a bold play that will decide the issue…to put all your chips or even the whole tournament on the line to back your instincts and judgement.

If it were not a game of skill, how could there be so many books on how to play and win ? What point is there in a book on how to be a lucky player ? The books are about how to be a good player.

If it were not a game of skill, why would we see the emergence of a substantial number of players who consistently achieve success. The big names, the stars have not reached the game’s pinnacle by losing. So what are they ? Just lucky ? Of course not, they’re great players; They’re not only equipped with natural talent (as all champions have to be) but they have worked and studied. They have proved that over time skill can and does prevail.

I repeat: poker is a game of luck and skill – but over the longer term, it’s the skill that prevails.

Des Wilson