Poker Tournaments: The Luck Factor

I've just been reading an interview with Bill Edler in Bluff Magazine. In it he comments that there is "tons more" luck in tournament poker than in cash games.

As a great tourney fan I was all ready to get offended by this. Tournament and cash games need different skills, but they're both just as skillful. Then I got to this line:

"Until science significantly elongates human life, tournament players will never reach the long run."

I've got to admit, he has a point.

Poker is a mix of luck and skill. In the short run anyone can get lucky. Ace-two off can beat pocket rockets. But in the long run skill wins.

If you play cash games you can just keep on playing, hand after hand, repeating similar situations again and again. You can reach a pretty long run view of the game in which your skill level really matters.

It's more difficult to do that in tournaments. There just aren't as many around. It's rare if not impossible for a player to bust out of one tournament then immediately play in another. Then another. Then another.

Even if they do, they will be starting from the early stages again. Tournament play requires different skills throughout the different stages - play at the final table is very different to play at the first blind levels. Even people who play nothing but tourneys are unlikely to see enough final tables to count as the "long run".

So what do I do now with that insight? Does it mean I should give up tournaments as pure gambling?

No. What it means to me is that I should play more tournaments in order to get as close as possible to the "long run".

Photo Credit: dicemanic (Creative Commons)

Labels: general, poker