Quote Originally Posted by vanzack:
Anyone can, and almost everyone will.
These guys are the hares in the tortoise and the hare scheme.
Just sit back and wait. Everyones hero Phil Ivey plays million dollar craps. Huh? Most of these guys are degenerates who were outliers on the luck spectrum, and now that sponsorship has dried up - they will go broke one by one.
If Phil goes broke it's because of his craps gambling problem away from the felt, not his poker skill so I'm not sure what you are trying to argue there. Therefore his poker skill supports his degenerate craps gambling habit proving those poker based cash flows are sufficient for long-term success.
With regard to the 20% skill comment, it is completely ridiculous.
Poker isn't a game about coin-flips. If everyone pushed pre-flop or at some point on any street every hand, it would never be a result of skill (unless you count what hole cards you enter the hand with).
The best pros never let you see their hand, thereby having the worst hand in a significant number of pots and still collecting the entire pot by well-timed bets and aggression. That amounts to a significant portion of their profits they would lose if they didn't bet appropriately.
In a game like blackjack, every hand is seen to the finish which is the reason why the house maintains its small edge for profits over the long-term.
The long-term profiting poker pro maintains their edge through proper reads and bets, and knowing the various ranges of their opponents to make and call value bets, and knowing what their opponent knows about their own ranges and styles and adjusting accordingly, sometimes every hand.
There are so many layers to the skill involved with poker beyond Wiz's obtuse, arbitrary off-base 'percentage' comments which are backed by nothing empirical.
Tournament poker is completely different than cash games as you know so that's another conversation for another day but most of the above applies to an extent until the donk with 2 million chips just keeps pressing till you are forced into a coin-flip and you bust.
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