Poker Requires Skills: 2

The University of Hamburg’s Institute of Law and Economics in Germany was the latest institute to tackle the ever present poker question. The two experts that lead the research were Jan Philipp Rock and Ingo Fiedler and they used several research methods and theoretical model machines that were developed specifically for this experiment. All of those machines were not able to prove with significant data that skill was required to play and win a game of poker. How is it possible that a game as involved as poker does not require skill when compared to an average online casino game. In their research of online casinos they came to the conclusion that one of the most popular games on the internet for poker is Texas Hold’em.

The study was conducted over a three month period and the two researchers studied the outcomes of over 55,000 online casino poker players who played millions of hands in the popular game, no limit Texas Hold’em. One big question that the pair had to answer was how they would define luck as opposed to skill, they decided to not make immediate judgments and wait until there was sufficient data to make that call on whether or not the online casino game was a game of chance or skill. The definition did have some definite fluctuations with the definition of chance and luck. The way that they measured the wins and losses from each and every player individually and then came to the determination that they would do noticeably better when they tried rather than depended on chance alone.