I played some online poker (at playwsop.com) and did quite terribly. I found the contrast between online and physical poker quite interesting. I used to play poker fairly frequently at one place that I worked and a particular sort of camaraderie definitely develops around the game that shapes how people interpret the influence of luck and skill. In online poker, there is a lot less communication (as all of it needs to be highly intentionally inputted), so the competition seems a lot more cold and calculating. The online format and constantly changing opponents also gives the sense of more routine and less chance. Both of these factors contribute to making the game seem much more about skill and making the right moves over long periods of time. In contrast, in person poker, even though I played it for real money and online only for fake money, people still took it a lot less seriously. They were more likely to bet on getting lucky or develop reputations as lucky or unlucky. People certainly tried to be skillful, but there seemed to be more of a balance between skill and luck, more of a playful understanding that no amount of skill could really make up for the randomness. This is of course true for online poker as well, but I think the atmosphere really shapes how people think about getting lucky (which is presumably why casinos invest so heavily into the ambiance). Poker is also interesting in that people think of it as one of the most skill-based gambling games and are far more likely to speak in terms of skill, so I imagine the dynamic is quite different for games such as the slot machines discussed in the reading.
