I love playing cards, but poker is just... not as much fun because there's too much luck involved compared to, say, Rummy-type games (like my biased favorite, the Brazilian Buraco: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buraco)
Over a statistically large sample of hands or games, skilled players will almost always dominate unskilled players.
That's true of any game or sport, though. Poker is just one in which that is "less true".
Skill in poker comes from managing variance over a long horizon; the advantage for a particular hand is largely determined by randomness
The advantage in sports does not derive from randomness, but from physical skill, and is generally apparent, and quantifiable, over a single contest (typically represented by a point spread or odds of winning). It would be almost impossible to quantify odds of winning a given poker hand before any cards are dealt.
You're literally making my point, now, namely: luck is a much bigger factor in poker than in other card games, so I prefer to play those that require less fortune from me and more strategy.
I would also add that poker, in the absence of real money, is not that fun, and that for pure entertainment value, I would rather play a game that relies less on variance.
> It would be almost impossible to quantify odds of winning a given poker hand before any cards are dealt.
Not directly relevant, but it just occured to me that, if you're playing poker against someone you know is more skilled than you, the best strategy is to not look at your cards.
Two players are playing, heads up. Both players always play every hand, and there is always exactly one bet and call per betting round. Under this scenario, the EV for each player is 0, since we could expect them to both win half the hands, and importantly, win exactly the same amount of money each hand.
Now consider a second situation in which player A plays every hand the same way, but player B folds with the lowest EV hand before any additional cards are revealed. (in hold'em this is 2-7 offsuit). What happens is that player B is losing less money with their worst hand than player A. And since this is zero-sum, it means player B will expect a very slight profit.
Now, extrapolate this to player B only playing +EV hands, while player A doesn't even look at their cards and plays every hand. The following betting rounds still proceed the same way. Player B will be losing a small amount - the ante - on poor hands, and willing a much larger amount with their good hands.
This gets to the heart of my argument - that skill in games like poker or backgammon - will inexorably prevail over a long enough timeline. Sure, player A might catch a great string of cards and beat player B sometimes. But play enough and player B will eventually dominate player A even if no other decisions are made.
This is all, of course, just a thought experiment, but it's meant to illustrate that skill in poker is equivalent to making +EV decisions in the face of incomplete information.
At that point, poker seems to me mostly about the skill of handling uncertainty and communicating with other players.
Now I wonder what your family rules are! A lot of people restrict the types of runs you can play (like only allowing grouped runs with for face cards and aces, or banning groups altogether), but my grandpa was a beast at the game so we played with pretty open rules which actually made the game more aggressive – i.e. wait too much to act and you'll fall behind, but play too open early on and you give away your strategy.
More interesting is that we actually called the game canasta, which actually is a different but related game.
The poker variants that are popular are popular exactly because there is so much more chance. The edge that skill gives is less in Texas Holdem than Omaha Hi-Lo. Which is why you see the former more than the latter.
Limit poker has thinner edges than no limit, but NL has been the ocular game.
Source, my brother-in-law is a WSOP champion in Omaha Hi-Lo. At low levels of play, the edge for skill isn't so big, but once you get someone who knows the game the edge goes up.
Tip, one of the best positions to be in is going for both hi and lo while an opponent thinks they have a lock on one of those. They feel committed to matching any bet, but you're going to walk away with 3/4 of the pot.
Winning tournaments proves little to nothing, the long run is far longer than any tournament. But boy was it great when one of those fish won a bracelet and took their winnings back to our games so we could bleed them of it over months and months.
O8 has similar variance to Holden, there isn’t a big difference. Most Fish quickly learn to rarely draw at the high only, and how to read the board, and that they have to play two cards. They still make numerous smaller mistakes, which is why they are fish.