Is Poker a Game of Skill or Luck?

Poker can feel cruel in the short term—bad beats and unlikely rivers are part of the deal—but long-term results are driven by skill. Think of it as a game of incomplete information, where each hand is a decision puzzle. Your job is to make the best decision based on what you know, not to win every pot. The better your decisions, the more likely you are to come out ahead across thousands of hands. What separates serious players from losing ones is not avoiding bad luck, but consistently capitalising on edges when they appear. Drawing on years of experience grinding from the lowest to highest stakes, Holloway puts the luck-vs-skill debate in clear terms: