I think the best that bots have done is 6 player games. But the main reason is probably that the not isn’t really available and also that I imagine it’s illegal.
Plenty of easier ways to cheat at online poker. Collusion being a big one.
It probably doesn’t matter if your math skills are better or worse than average. What matters is if your math skills are better than those of the second best player at the table.
That depends on whom you’re playing against, and at what table. At a home table (i.e., with no house cut), against average players, better-than-average will by definition make a (possibly small) profit.
“Average” also requires defining what set you’re averaging over. All of the people who have ever played any poker at all? All of the people who know the rules of poker? All people everywhere? There are a lot of people out there who have never bothered to put any effort into learning to play well, because they never play. Or maybe you’re not averaging over people at all, but over seats at games, so people who play a lot get a higher weighting in your average.
Very rudimentary. It’s not that complex. Most of the relevant odds can just be memorized or you do the x2 and x4 tricks.
Do you have a flush draw? One chance in six you will catch it on the next card. Straight draw? Basically the same thing (a tiny bit less but not by enough to bother.) What’re the odds your set of fives will turn into a full house or four of a kind on the last card, the river? If you hold a pair of threes, what are the odds you’ll hit another three when the flop comes? About one in eight. Really, it’s a pretty limited number of possible things you need to memorize to be a decent amateur.
After that you need to learn pot odds but that’s not really all that hard either.
I’ve always looked at it this way; the vast, vast majority of people paying poker RIGHT NOW are playing for some of the lowest available stakes in a poker room or a friend’s house or online. So, “Average” is basically the average player at a 1/3 game at the Bellagio or the Commerce or your friend’s $50 tournament in his basement. Some of those people might be pretty darned good, but most will be just moderately competent. That’s who the average is.
For me, it’s the PDL (pure dumb luck) method. That and if the stakes are higher than pocket change, no alcohol. My father played for real money way back in the day (100s back then). He told me to never draw more than two cards. Three cards tells other players that you really don’t have shit and the chances of you drawing to that pair are slim. He would only play draw or 5-card stud, none of those “kid games” as he called them, and absolutely nothing involving wild cards.
Lots of luck these days finding any game where you can draw any cards.
I won’t play hold 'em. Too many variables and too easy to get really burned. Actually, I haven’t played poker in probably 20 years. I tried to see if there would be any interest here at The Home, but no luck. The last time I played was with coworkers and I pretty much cleaned them out. I wasn’t invited again. 
Circling back to the question originally posed, I think that tells, reading body language, etc., are VASTLY overrated… as pretty conclusively demonstrated by the number of players who cut their teeth online (where obviously what we normally think of as “tells” are nonexistent). I suspect they only occupy as much space as they do in the general imagination because of how prominent they are in TV shows and movies… because they make for a far more compelling story than pot odds, implied odds, ranges, etc.
Although as others have persuasively argued, you could kinda circle back around and argue that the most important skill is “reading” your opponent… but reading them in terms of the actual poker actions they take and what that implies, not in terms of “oooh, he eats his oreos a particular way when he has a good hand”.
Obviously it matters. An average runner will dominate at the nursing home. Just not an especially interesting observation.
And no, it’s not definitionally true that an above average player will make money absent a rake. Winnings are skewed.
At tables without rakes, the average amount of winnings is exactly $0. Therefore, an above-average player will have winnings of more than $0. Maybe (probably) not in every single game, but over the long run.
Average player as in average skill. Not average player in winnings. As you define it you can clearly have 90% of players be below average.
An average of some trait is only meaningful if you have some way of quantifying that trait, and how else would you quantify poker skill than by winnings? And yes, of course it’s possible for 90% of the players in a group to be below the group’s average… What’s odd about that?
Player A wins more than Player B. Player A is more skilled?
Ok, do this for every player and line them up. The 50% percentile player will be a loser, guaranteed.
I agree with Snarky Kong. A player who’s above average in the group can still lose money.
Here’s an example. Let’s say there are six players in a regular group. They all bring a hundred dollars every week and play for eight hours. So there’s six hundred dollars in play.
Al’s a great player. On average he leaves with five hundred dollars each week.
Bob’s the second best player in the group. On average he leaves with sixty dollars each week.
The other four players leaves with a average of ten dollars each week.
Bob’s clearly above average within the group. But he’s not making a profit.
That’s the median, not the average. It may well be that the median player out of a group is usually a money-loser (though it can still be the case, in some particular group, that the median is a winner).
No, because the average is 100. The second-best of anything is not necessarily above the average. Like, the second-richest person in Medina, Washington is below the average wealth for that town.
At that level it’s having all of them, and using them perfectly every time. But I think what you’re really asking, is which skill will get you the farthest if you don’t have the other one? I would say reading people over maths. If you are good at that, you get information on every hand at the table. Whereas maths can only give you a guesstimate of whether or not to draw.
Maybe… except that, at the top levels, math is how you read people. And at all levels, for online poker.
I know I will never get to the top level because of my math skills. If you listen to Daniel Negreanu‘a patter it’s pretty amazing how close he comes to guessing the percentages just by seeing the table and no hole cards. The top level is always calculating the percentages. They aren’t reading the body language since most other players are trying to act like robots. It’s all math and patterns. What the casual player loses track of is that what you see on TV is just edited bits of a tournament that lasted hours at the very least. And as someone mentioned patience is a huge part of the game. I remember playing in AC when they first started televising the tournaments regularly. There was a huge influx of college kids coming in and thinking they should go all in on every hand. You can win a few hands that way but in the long run you’ll get crushed.
Ranked in order I would say, math, analyzing betting patterns, betting strategy and patience. If you are playing with casual players math stops being as important except at the most basic level. If you are playing chess pros you better have an advanced knowledge or they will mop the floor with you.
And of course there is luck. The pros want you to believe it’s all skill. Over time they are right. Skill will beat luck over time. But there will always be bad beats and anyone can beat anyone on a single hand.
Unless you are in a game where you are likely to be murdered that’s a dumb idea. In a game with table stakes you have to constantly count your money as well as what everyone else has on the table in order to form your betting strategy. And that’s much more important in elimination tournaments.
You must always, always know how much money you have in no limit hold 'em. And you need to be aware of what your opponents have. (They don’t have to specifically tell you but must have their chips visible in such a way that you can see what they have. I’ll always tell an opponent what I have if they ask, though.)