Luck Or Skill
In slots tournaments, most people tend to win or lose the same amount as everyone else and people rarely manage to consistently win significant sums of money. This is because slots is a game where the importance of luck predominates over the importance of skill. In the poker and online poker world things are very different. Whilst low limit games played by inexperienced amateurs might well be heavily influenced by luck, in high stakes games where the better players tend to concentrate the importance of skill comes to the fore.
In top poker competitions there are successful star players just like there are in other games such as football tennis and snooker. This is not because they are simply luckier than the other players , it is because they utilise well practiced tactics and strategies to consistently outplay their competitors. They are better at reading their opponents, recalculating the odds and playing in an unpredictable manner that outfoxes the other players in the game.
The history of top tournaments such as the WSOP is dominated by a relatively small number of people who have consistently managed to win over the years. Poker players such as Phil Hellmuth junior, Doyle "Texas Dolly" Brunson and Johnny " The oriental Express" Chan have dominated the event together with a handful of other leading names and won millions of dollars between them in the process. If poker were purely a game of chance where the way the pack was dealt was the sole determinant of the who won, these star players with consistent records of winning would not arise and nobody would ever win (or maybe lose) substantial sums of money.
One of the best ways to develop a winning style of play in poker is to study and learn from the people who are succeeding in the game today. There are lots of top resources, both online and otherwise. For online we would suggest checking out the pokerschool site and for offline we would recommend flicking thru books written by some of todays top professions. Below are some Amazon links to some of our current favourites.
