Is poker a game of skill?

I thought this would be an appropriate first post as it was a question posed to me by a friend a few days ago.

For anyone who hasn't studied the game in depth or played it in some sort of serious fashion, then it is understandable that they would be oblivious (not sure if i used that word correctly) to the amount of skill in poker.

First of all (completely ignoring the mathematical aspects) poker is a game of information gathering. We should be analysing our opponents' hand ranges (a set of hands he would play in such a manner) and our own perceived hand ranges. Above that we have to consider our position and those relative to us, game flow, table image, tendencies, etc. Unfortunately at the beginning we're not aware of these things. All we think about is the cards in our hands and the cards on the board. The more information a player gathers and uses, the more proficient he/she is at the game.

Moving along, Sklansky's fundamental theorem of poker states that poker is a game of incomplete information in which you can make optimal decisions based on any given scenario. Mathematically we can express this as expected value. If a fish puts in his whole stack with bottom pair and rivers trips then we can't argue that that is luck. However if he always puts money in mathematically unfavourable spots he will lose in the long run. No one can escape the math. If he only has a 18% chance of winning he might hit it two, three or four times in a row but in the long run he will lose money. The bottom line is if we have the knowledge and skills to put ourselves in mathematically favourable positions then we will win in the long run.

If I were asked for the composition of poker as the factors of luck and skill i would say that it is composed of 65% skill and 35% luck. 35% luck because we can in no way determine our preflop hands and the cards that come on the board. However I believe its 65% skill as we get to choose the most (mathematically) profitable spots to put our money in with exception of the blinds where we are forced to put money in.
Feel free to comment
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For further reading I would suggest the following articles:
Freakonomics - Poker: Skill vs. Chance
Pokernews - Dutch professor cites poker as a skill game