In my post I said "rarely" because I try to avoid being "absolute" in my statements - always leaving an "out" in case someone convinces me I was wrong. In this case, using the word "rarely" was wrong 
I think most of the rest of my post left no wiggle room on the point that was being made. Making a good (or bad) bet is what you do in advance of the event on which you're betting; getting lucky (or not) is what happened when the event occurred. You control which bets you make, you control which decisions you make if the game has decision-points (which video poker does on every hand when you decide whether and what to draw) - but you can't control luck / chance.
There are games of pure skill, e.g. chess. There are games of pure chance, e.g. most slots (ignoring game selection, which may reflect "skill"). And there are games with an element of skill and an element of chance, such as video poker, live poker, and others. Performance as an athlete is almost pure skill with a very small element of chance (which way the ball bounces when it hits the ground in a particular place, perhaps).
I personally consider live poker to be primarily a game of skill with an element of chance, while I consider video poker to be primarily a game of chance with an (important, even critical) element of skill - but I'm sure some would put both games in the first category. I might do so myself if I played more hours so that short-term outcomes were less important to me.
Doesn't really matter whether you call a game with both elements mainly chance or mainly skill, you have to live with the fact that both parts are out there. You can't win long-term without skill and you can't win short-term without luck, and the only real difference between the definition of "long-term" vs "short-term" is how certain you want to be that skill will prevail.
I'll fly with the sober pilot, thank you very much.
--BG
路路路
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1d. Re: Bob Dancer's LV Advisor Column - 8 JAN 2013
Rarely? Can you give an example of luck being
predictable? I
theoretically agree with the "I'd rather be lucky than good"
inanity,
but it's a negative free-roll philosophy. It's either
useless or it
implies that luck is relevant, in which case it can give
birth to the
"due theory" or its opposite. It's just a matter of
wisdom. In life
in general, the wise person cares about doing the right
thing, whereas
the short-sighted person cares about getting lucky.>And RARELY can you decide ahead of an event (which is
when we have to make our decisions on most things) whether
you will be "lucky" or not, all you can decide ahead of time
is whether the odds are in your favor. Those who make
good bets will win more often than those who do not, but
those making good bets can get unlucky, and those making bad
bets can get lucky, and we are best off making good bets and
then hopiing that we don't get unlucky, which in the end
determines how we did, than we are making bad bets and
hoping we get lucky to offset our disadvantage.
>