Grosvenor-sponsored poker player Jeff Kimber knows a thing or two about the forces at play in gaming. But where does his allegiance lie, and why?

Do you feel that luck or skill plays more of a role in poker at a professional level?

Jeff Kimber: Well, whilst you can argue that a combination of luck and skill in poker is necessary, I feel there is much more skill than luck needed. At a professional level we have accepted that there is some luck in the game, but not only does it level out over the long term, there's nothing we can do about luck anyway.

Where we can affect the outcome of the game is by being better than our opponent, using any number of skills to outplay them – picking up tells, playing our stack size perfectly, seizing on weakness, pressurising them, understanding game situations, getting our bet sizes right so value bets are paid off, but overall seeing the bluff to get us through.

Can you think of specific times when using luck or skill has really paid off – and relying on the other would have been no use?

Jeff Kimber: As a professional poker player, I try not to leave anything to luck. I’d much prefer to use my skill to ensure victory. However, in poker, you need to know that there are always opportunities to ‘get lucky.’

Luck can of course come in many forms, as well as the most obvious, such as outdrawing someone when you have a worse hand. Other lucky situations might lead you to a big hand – you might get a lucky table draw where you play with less skilled players from other tables, you may not have to face your fiercest opponents if they’re knocked out in an earlier stage. It’s really all down to chance and cannot be predicted. Sometimes though, if everybody at the table plays perfect poker, the game can come down to one big hand where neither player has messed up. In this situation, the winner of that coin flip is then definitely the luckiest.

I say the key in poker is to use that good luck to go on to win big. One of the first lessons you’ll learn in poker is this – things even themselves out. If you’re on one side of luck, you'll almost certainly be on the flip side soon enough.