I've long decided that this is basically the only skill in poker. OK, that's too trite, but it dominates all other skills.
If you can play even a little bit - eg you know some hand rankings and don't get too drunk - you're better than some players, and you can find a game you can beat.
If you're the 20th best player in the world, but instead of looking to play against weaker players you yearn to challenge yourself against the best, or in general if you move to bigger and tougher games every time things are going well, you will lose money in the long run.
It's not quite that simple in practice. You might be one of the worst players in your local cardroom, so your only winning move is not to play. Or you might be one of the best, but you don't travel to other games, so you win in spite of your self. I've seen so many people like this! If you play on the Internet, however, that's effectively not possible.
Game selection is the most important way to make money in poker, but the stronger a player you are, the more games you can select from. Isaac Haxton is a top pro player who only plays only tournaments that cost $10k+ to buyin to, and recently discussed how this works on a recent episode of the Thinking Poker podcast by Andrew Brokos. He actually recommends against tournaments for less experienced players aiming to make money since smaller buyin tournaments have large fields and thus large variance, but the "high roller" tournaments have smaller fields which make variance more reasonable.
The bigger point is that while playing against worse players is an important skill if you want to make money, poker is still a very complex game with a high skill ceiling similar to a game like chess. If you're good enough, even pro players are "worse players" and you can "select" those games. Though admittedly even the high roller tournaments require some "recreational" businessman players for enough pros to be willing to play it for it to run.
Solver study has become essential for the vast majority of top pros, which Haxton also discusses in the podcast, and I mentioned my project in the space in my other comment.
For people actually trying to make a living playing poker, it isn’t enough just to find a game you can win; the game also has to return enough per hour to make it worth your while. Even if you can reliably win, but only $5 an hour, it isn’t worth your time. There is an opportunity cost to consider.
It’s true that playing against bad players will increase your win rate but it’s also true that if you study and improve you will also improve your win rate. It’s not true that there’s no point in studying since you should only play against bad players, because “bad player” is relative to your skill.
The podcast episode I recommended is a long time pro player interviewing another long time pro player, whose widely regarded as one of the best players ever, so I think these people know better than the HN comment section of “well 20 years ago I read one sklansky book and a year ago I played a 2/5 game and didn’t win much so poker is pointless unless you play idiots”
> The bigger point is that while playing against worse players is an important skill if you want to make money, poker is still a very complex game with a high skill ceiling similar to a game like chess.
I used to strongly agree with this (skill ceiling is so high that large edges can be found if good enough) but no longer believe this is the case - I think the edges are much narrower now in the top levels of the pro scene, much of which I'm sure is due to the rise of solvers and the game being closer to "solved" now than it was even 5 years ago.
There's a lot of complex evidence for this, but without going into too much, the degree of scumbaggery in pro scenes going on is usually a strong indicator. When edges get small, pros tend to get a little scummier to get ahead.
If you can play even a little bit - eg you know some hand rankings and don't get too drunk - you're better than some players, and you can find a game you can beat.
If you're the 20th best player in the world, but instead of looking to play against weaker players you yearn to challenge yourself against the best, or in general if you move to bigger and tougher games every time things are going well, you will lose money in the long run.
It's not quite that simple in practice. You might be one of the worst players in your local cardroom, so your only winning move is not to play. Or you might be one of the best, but you don't travel to other games, so you win in spite of your self. I've seen so many people like this! If you play on the Internet, however, that's effectively not possible.