Some people like to think that gambling is won or lost based on skill, some people think it is based purely on luck, and others think that it is a combination of the two. There is no real definitive answer, so the arguments are all valid in their own ways, but there is another belief.
A strategy is the other way people can justify wins or losses when it comes to gambling, and of all the arguments, this one seems to be more valid when comparing it to luck as a factor. If you were ever curious about whether it is luck or strategy that wins money, read on.
When is Luck More Important?
There are a lot of games out there that can reasonably be considered more luck-based than skill-based, which makes them likely to be won on pure chance rather than through grand strategy. If you look at some games at this Singapore online casino, you can see that slots, a casino favorite, would be more likely to be luck-based considering the fact that you have no control over the machine other than hitting spin. There are a lot of times where luck is the primary factor, which makes a big win even harder to determine.
When is Strategy More Important?
However, that doesn’t tell the full story. Games like poker require a lot of knowledge of the game itself, including an acute appreciation of the math involved. With a 52 card deck, you can reasonably figure out rough percentages of which cards have been dealt or are being held based on your hand (also known as card counting), which is a sign that strategy can be implemented into your thought process to determine outcomes. The problem is, luck still favors people in random ways even in a game that you can develop strategies in.
Odds and Predictability of a Game
That is why the odds and predictability of events in a game are important for figuring out the luck vs. strategy argument. A game like roulette has odds that vary due to factors like the physics of a ball bounce, something not many people can figure out on the fly, and games like blackjack have odds that favor the player the most but can still be unpredictable. Realistically speaking, the odds should help make luck less of a factor in some games, but that doesn’t always happen.
Skill as a Mitigating Factor
So if odds don’t solve it, does skill? Again, it is not an easy question to answer. There isn’t much skill to playing slots, and there is a lot of skill to poker, a game where a high percentage of players still lose. Skill can certainly mitigate the variables like luck or odds, but a player with no experience and a good strategy can still win or lose.
It feels like a cop-out to say that this is an argument that may never be solved, but the truth is that it might actually never be solved. You can argue about math, probabilities, odds, strategy, and skill, but the fact is that even the most skill-based gambling games still rely on luck to some degree, which makes it a toss-up for the most part.