Poker – a game of luck or one of skill?

With one court decision after another ruling that poker is in fact a game of skill, let’s take a closer look at this more than controversial question.
We’re going to have to start out from the premise that poker is indeed a game of skill. There are now scientific studies available to prove this and I’ll go into details on them later on. Just how big a role does the luck element have in it though? While I agree that it is a predominantly skill based game, I’d also like to know how one can quantify the element of luck.
Take a look at the following YouTube video in order to see the luck element in action:

It is about Jamie Gold (who else) squaring off against Patrik Antonius in a hand in which the latter has a straight against the former’s set of Ks.

The hand begins with Gold basically telling the others at the table what his pocket hand is. He tries to be subtle about it, but his quiet eagerness betrays him. There are numerous opinions and theories out there about just how skilled a poker player Jamie Gold is, but I suppose we’ll have to agree that in this instance he walks straight into the trap that Patrik Antonius sets him. The Finn picks up all the preflop information he needs about Gold’s hand and decides to see a flop probably hoping that it will bring along an A that will get the better of Gold’s pocket Ks. The flop brings a gutshot straight draw though, so he’s still in search of a hand when Gold commits his second mistake: he gives Antonius a shot at completing his hand on the turn by betting a small-enough amount into him. The Finn pounces on the opportunity, and sure enough, the turn brings a K which doesn’t just give Antonius the nut straight, it also gives Gold a set of Ks, a hand which he would probably never be able to get away from.
Predictably, Gold runs into the trap without a second thought, goes all-in and gets called by Antonius. What comes after this is the interesting part: the two players agree to run the river card 3 times, and even though Antonius has a made hand going up against Gold’s 12 outs, two times out of three he loses the pot.
Now then, Gold makes several mistakes in this hand and Antonius makes none. Of course, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that Gold is a lucky fellow. Not after his 2006 WSOP Main Event run it shouldn’t, but this example makes one wonder about just how much of a factor luck is in this game.

Whether or not poker is a skill dominated game is no longer a question. For years, those advocating that poker was in fact a form of gambling, kept going back to the claim that there wasn’t any clear, science-rooted evidence to support that the skill factor was the dominant one in the game. Nowadays, there are several such studies. Two German scientists from the University of Hamburg ran an experiment based on actual hand histories lifted from an online poker room, which analyzed win-loss fluctuations and players’ win-loss averages to determine how big a role skill had in the outcome. They concluded that those with a skill-wise edge over their competitors did much better than less skilled players, to an extent which is clearly outside of the variation induced by chance.

In a study aimed to offer a simpler and more convincing view on the skill factor, a couple of American researchers have determined beyond any sort of doubt that poker was indeed predominantly based on skill. They looked at a staggering number of 130 million hands played at PokerStars, and concluded that 76% of the hands played never saw a showdown. In a hand which doesn’t even allow the cards to have any sort of say whatsoever, the luck factor is obviously non-existent.
With all this in mind, I suppose we can conclude that poker is a game of skill, except when one adds Jamie Gold to the mix…