Poker is a phenomenally popular game; its popularity online and on television as a professional sport has shot it up in the esteem stakes, and the amount of people playing this game has grown exponentially. It is unreal how many people play poker, and it is unreal at how many poker “experts” we now have available to learn from. Some experts proclaim that poker is not a game of luck, it is a game of skill and strategy, and when you look at this long and hard enough, you realize this is true.
Poker cards have no memory and no mind, they are just a pack of cards; the dealer is just a dealer. Neither of these entities is responsible for the cards you receive when you play poker. It is your responsibility to take action to either fold if you have a crap hand or play if you have a starter. Poker skill and strategy teaches you this. But luck counts when those cards are being dealt – it has to, nothing else has any control over them.
The luckiest player in a game of poker or any other game of cards for that matter; is the player who takes the most out of a stroke of good fortune. That takes skill!!
Poker players get lucky and they get unlucky and if they have a lucky streak, the sensible and knowledgeable poker players know this will bottom out at some point over the long-term. A lucky player may seem invincible to a novice player, but what that novice player doesn’t realize is that he too may have got lucky many times already but has not known what to do with it, or has been unable to recognize this.
Accomplishment is really what luck is all about; there is always skill behind luck unless you are playing a slot machine. But even this takes a certain amount of skill, a slots player knows that to win the PJP, he has to get lucky, but knowledge tells him he also has to place the maximum bet for the maximum win.
Attributing other poker players’ skill to luck is a natural reaction in players who don’t know any better. It is very lucky for example to get pocket Aces, but if you don’t know how to play them for maximum value, you don’t have the skill to make the most out of a game.
A good poker player is able to play both good luck and bad luck situations’ to their advantage and it is this that gets them the dubious title of being a “lucky” player.
Learn to recognize when luck is handing you something on a platter and learn how to exploit this to your best advantage. If you are desperately in need of chips in a tournament and your opponents all fold to you in the cut-off. This is luck, and it is also when a good player raises; no matter what cards he is holding. A bad player folds and blames bad luck, a good player, thanks his lucky stars he had the insight to raise!