The hard law of Sport

From the theme of skills in live poker, today, I propose a reflection on the characteristics of sports disciplines compared to Texas Hold’em poker. In any sport, the smallest error of an athlete can be fatal to the success of the performance; if the perfect execution of the sporting gesture automatically leads to the success of the performance, the mistake made by an athlete implies, in the opinion of the writer, an advantage for the rival. In traditional live poker tournaments, as proved, it isn’t exactly so. You could have a perfectly optimal playing behavior and have no guarantee of victory and similarly make a mistake and not suffer any consequences, or worse, still get gratification.

The 5 Poker Realities

These structural features are well known by all professionals in Texas Hold’em, who have acquired as mantra the five fundamental realities elaborated by the authors Ian Taylor and Matthew Hilger in a best seller of the world-wide poker literature, “Poker Mindset“, that they define “The five realities of poker” (I. Taylor and M. Hilger, 2007) :

1. Poker is both a skill and chance game
2. In the short term, fortune is sovereign
3. In the long run, ability is sovereign
4. Poker is a game of small advantages
5. Poker is a game with a very high variance factor.

The authors are keen to highlight the importance and need, for professional players, to accept the five rules so that they can adjust their mindset and orient it to the quality of decisions. It is quite clear that “the five realities of poker” are governed by guidelines based solely on the hypotheses of probabilistic and long-term mathematics.

Go to the next article not to lose the thread of the discussion on the Skill Poker Index, or go to the first article of the series to resume it.

Pietro Semeraro

Transl. by Margherita Basile