The final table of NPL is all luck - agree?

[rcon]

As was once said by some poker player , "Poker is 100% skill and 50% luck."

If you set your image up right, and play your opponent well, you can make them lay down the better hand - that is skill in my book.

Example - last Thursday night at the Royal, got to heads up. Now I knew I'd played TAG poker whilst on the same table as my opponent (only the FT, but that was enough), so when I raised into him with J7o, I got him to lay down KJs. Sure, there is a bit of luck involved in that, as he had not played too much heads up, but the point holds - he put me on an ace because I'd set my image up right.

[xtal]

"Poker is 100% skill and 50% luck." --- Phil Hellmuth

[bennymacca]

rcon, you are right, but heads up is slightly different as you probably have more chips to play with.

look at this scenario

50 runner tournament, assuming everyone gets their cards stamped, this gives 200K max worth of chips in the tournament. this means that the average stack on the final table is only 22K. but by this point, the blinds are 2K-4K, 3K-6K or 5K-10K - so at best, you only have 5BB worth, and at worst, 2. the typical big stack will only have 50K or so at most, which is still not much at all.

if you come onto the final table with an average stack, it is mostly about luck. firstly, the luck in drawing a position far away from the blinds. after that, u pretty much gotta rely on getting something worth pushing all in for, as implied odds are that you should be getting all of your chips in the pot anyway, or instead making a move and hoping to get lucky.

it comes down to winning a single pot as to whether you bust out in 8th, or make it to the top 3.

[bennymacca]

edit: this scenario pretty much describes all NPL tourneys - if there is 150 runners, then it will most likely be 10-20 blinds with an average stack being 66K

it most definitely is about luck.

in the long run however, the luck evens out, and the good players will get their fair share of wins over a period of time.

[Bacon]

Final tables are all luck, cos I had 3 2nd's last season & 0 wins.

I'm better than that!!

[rcon]

Ah, if the question was, "Is the final table more about luck than it should be", then I would have answered "Of course". Heads up, there can be quite a bit of skill involved. Thursday at the Royal went for a good 15 minutes, but Saturday against Vinnie, it was all over in about 8 hands.

As for most of the final table play, there is only so much you can do with 5BB's

[Hans_Gruber]

For an individual tournament, yes - that's the nature of gambling. But getting to a solid amount of final tables over the course of many tournaments is not luck.

[Chelsea4thewin]

the final table is like the bad beat table

[bennymacca]

For an individual tournament, yes - that's the nature of gambling. But getting to a solid amount of final tables over the course of many tournaments is not luck.

exactly right hans - but i don't think its the nature of gambling (gambling and poker are different), but rather you have to gamble more because of the stack sizes

Heads up, there can be quite a bit of skill involved

heads up is different, because the two players can have 20 or more BB per person - so there is some skill in that.

i can still remember my first ever win, we played heads up for like half an hour before i finally picked up pocket queens and managed to trap Fil.

but there is more luck than skill in getting into a heads up situation.

[Hans_Gruber]

exactly right hans - but i don't think its the nature of gambling (gambling and poker are different), but rather you have to gamble more because of the stack sizes

Yeah, true - more the nature of chance than the nature of gambling. The skill in poker is bucking the trend of raw statistics to come out on top more often than pure chance would dictate