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orthonormal comments on Can chess be a game of luck? - Less Wrong
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Correct, of course; but we can make some pretty strong quantitative distinctions. I'm more likely to win the lottery than to beat Kasparov (assuming he's healthy and playing at his usual level, etc). But I bet I could beat any human being or computer program at Candyland half the time.
Similarly, if you put me heads-up against a poker pro, I might stand as much as a 10% chance of knocking them out (by getting lucky on the river on an all-in); but that level of luck averages out to a great degree over a long tournament, so that again my chances of making the final table at the WSOP are order-of-lottery bad.
Indeed. (Assuming nobody's cheating, of course.) Garfield's statement does not necessarily reflect my own opinions on things.
In this case, you can probably improve your chances by making the game more about luck -- just go all-in every hand.
I've heard that, if you go all-in on every hand in a heads-up poker match, the optimal counter-strategy still leaves you with a 1/3 chance of winning. (I don't know if this is correct or not.)
It depends -- in the limit where blinds are zero, you only call with aces and win 80% of the time. For more realistic values you may well be right.
(I had a truly marvelous bit about luck in chess in an unposted draft. Now I'll probably throw that bit away.)
Sounds about right to me. Going all-in every hand (pre-flop, and blind, of course, so I can't be read) would definitely improve my odds if I were in a heads-up game against a pro. But at a table with more than (say) 3 others, unless they can read me as perfectly as Omega, I should probably start looking at my cards and following a simple memorized poker algorithm.
Reminds me of making the system dumber when faced with a superior adversary.
If you're winning, simplify. If you're losing, complicate. Works in philosopher's football too -- if you expect to be the one to bolt first, you want a kink in the path.