The game of poker involves both luck and skill. In the short term, luck can play a significant role in determining the outcome of individual hands or sessions. However, over the long term, skill becomes a more important factor in determining success in poker.

Like in the games of chess, Go (game), and many other games, artificial intelligence systems beat even the best humans at poker. Poker is a game of imperfect information (because some cards in play are concealed) thus making it harder for anyone (including a computer) to deduce the final outcome of the hand.