Is Video Poker a Game of Skill or Luck

[FloridaPhil]

[quote=Bob Dancer]Video poker is applied math. Accept it --- learn to deal with it --- and it will provide insights into how to beat the game.[/quote]This is an excellent discussion that everyone on this forum should follow.  What we have here is two players on the total opposite side of the spectrum.  Bob Dancer promotes betting bigger and I advise players to bet smaller.  Who is right?   Let's see if we can discuss this subject without the prerequisite personal attacks. By now the world is full of players who are well versed on Bob's strategy, can play just as well as he can and still lose big.  That's because video poker is not a science based on math and long term winning is not based totally on skill.   The RNG does not know anything about math and it doesn't know who Bob Dancer is anymore than it knows me.  That royal flush you have been waiting for may come and it may not.  Bob's strategy will most definitely let you play longer and take better advantage of comps, but it won't guarantee you will win.  No one can do that.  Lest we forget, video poker is a slot machine. If it is truly random no one is in control and no one can guarantee any strategy will win over the long term.  Bob Dancer will say that the odds are with him.  I agree, but the fact that it could or couldn't go his way makes all the difference.Now that we have that out of the way, is Bob's Dancer's strategy worth pursuing?  If you have all of his positive opportunities and resources, of course.  I'm not promoting any winning strategies, I'm only giving the rest of the players an alternative to losing more than they have to. 

[edog743]

I think it is neither according to the experts V.P. is all about timing hitting the draw button at the exact time needed to achieve the results you desire from the RNG. So video poker is all about timing.

[Mr.Dawes]

I believe that video poker is a game of both skill and luck. The purpose of developing skill is to reduce the degree to which luck is a factor.

[Eduardo]

.

I will simplify what I was trying to say in another post.

[Eduardo]

Is a coin flip luck or skill?

LUCK, of course!

But if you were to tell me you'd give me 60 cents for every heads and I had to give you 40 cents for every tails, I'd say let's flip until the cows come home!

When you got 5 tails in a row, I would gladly say you had a lucky streak. When I got 5 in a row, I'll accept that was lucky too.

But when you went broke and I went home happy, it wouldn't be because of good or bad luck, it would be because I made a skillful bet and you were the fool.

[olds442jetaway]

I would love to believe that skill is more important than luck, but unfortunately for me, that does not appear to be the case. As I have posted before, math rules are based on infinity and they may never come around and average out in one's lifetime. I play with almost perfect strategy, and almost always only the highest paytables I can find, unless I am just playing a really low denomination machine as a diversion and with a real small amount of money. My lack of Royals over the last several years just reinforces my beliefs and my hands on single line games where the Royals are almost never happening covers about 5 million hands over the last 5 years or so. One can read my prior posts where I have averaged five or six hundred thousand hands without one several times. Other types of premium hands are appearing about on schedule, but the no Royal factor costs me another two percent or so of my gross coin in. Add that to your usual one percent you give up on a 99% game, some crazy play on low denomination machines, or a few mistakes here and there and you end up with a 95% return. As a result, my play now is all CS based or CSMC based which is CS with a very very mild Martingale clone built in.
     Edited to add another item luck related or lack thereof depending how you view it. In 2001, I was dealt 2 Royals on a Double Down Stud machine just a couple of months apart. Now some 14 years and about 9 million hands later, there were just 2 dealt Royals total on all forms of single line vp games. There should have been about 13 in that time period. There was another one I don't count as a dealt Royal since it appeared after tossing all 5 dealt cards. I have no doubt that skill has kept my losses down somewhat, but at least in my case, a predominance of unlucky hands still prevails.

[wildman49]

Olds Your results boggle the mind. To me there is something going on where you play. Where I play here in the cold Midwest, the machines seem normal but for a few banks that I stay away from. The past 2 years 26 royals for me, they come in about normal (1 in 40,000 hands). As for math the more I read the more I take in I agree 100% applied math with comps and other goodies as Bob calls them can work. It has for me but I can't make a living at it but one can get ahead in a small way working the system. Now with the proper size bankroll one should be able to work the system most any casino with promos. You have to play more then once a month or once a week, you have to play a ton of hands to average out. I think its more skill then luck when one plays a mountain of hands a week. Now some that only play 2 times a month is going to say luck and I see that. If one goes 2 trips a month plays DDB say 2500 hands a trip, since 4 aces/wk come in 1 in 16,000 hands and one hits that hand I say had some luck on there side.  Its all in how much time you put in both practice at home and play at the casino, the more hands you play per month the more math plays into it.

[FloridaPhil]

There is no doubt that skill will make you luckier.  Unfortunately there is no guarantee that you will be lucky enough to realize the actually ER on any video poker game.  What professionals do is stack the odds as much as they can in their favor then gamble that math will make them a winner.  A few pull this off, most are not lucky enough to make it happen.   Like all gamblers the lucky ones only talk about winning and how skillful they are, they never talk about the multitudes of losers.Outside of the very few players in the world who in fact do win, there are the rest of us.  For most, video poker is a loser no matter what we do.  With skill and luck we may cut that loss to a minimum or even turn a profit for a period of time.   Some players don't care about the cost of enjoying a win.   Players like me want to enjoy the game and winning just as much as everyone else, but they don't want to lose more money than necessary just to be entertained.Video poker is gambling.  If you believe like I do that the RNG is truly random, the math allows for losers as well as winners.  The difference is luck and that is what inevitably determines who wins and who loses.

[jetermacaw]

I believe that video poker is a game of both skill and luck. The purpose of developing skill is to reduce the degree to which luck is a factor. I'll second that!

[case]

Phil
I agree that you need luck in VP. However I don't agree with your first line "There is no doubt that skill will make you luckier"
Skill makes you better...not luckier.