This is Part 2 in a 7-part series about world poker champion and cognitive scientist Annie Duke, PhD., whose insights follow each question below. To read from the start of the series, see Part 1.

Jenny Grant Rankin: There's a lot of talk about the importance of games for children because they teach them good sportsmanship, but you make a compelling case that games are important to help us better understand life.

Annie Duke: Yes, even a game like Candyland has the influence of luck. Different games have different levels of this. With a game like chess, I can see the pieces on the board, so that reduces the amount of hidden information, and there are no dice involved, so that reduces the influence of luck. But even chess holds uncertainty because I don't know exactly what you're thinking or what you're going to do. I have some theory of mind, and I can kind of guess based on your past history, but I don't know what openings you've been studying, or whether you're going to see a particular setup that I'm trying to do, or other things that I really don't have control over.

You can see a sliding scale across things you do in life that has to do with how much luck is involved, which is also related to how much information you have at hand. That toggles with how much skill is in the short run. While poker is a skill game, it is very much determined by luck, and........

© Psychology Today