So here goes.

(Please note that this is *not* a back alley thread.)

Since I've got deeper into chip collecting, I find my interest in poker re-kindling. (Not enough to hit the Vegas tables yet, but enough to wish I could have a weekly stud game to take my mind off the work shite.)

But it also leads me to ask two questions of everyone, since other than bets on Packer/Viking games or NCAA pools, I only remember one thread ever talking about gambling, and that was an offshoot from the original topic.

The questions are these:

1. Do you play poker, and how much? If you do, why and how do you play it? (home v casino, which games, how often, etc.) If you don't play, why not? (no time, it's evil, can't afford it, etc.)

2. Do you consider poker a form of gambling? On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is roulette and 0 is playing a game of HORSE (the basketball game), where would you put poker-for-money? Where would you put stock market investing?

Thank you in advance.

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By the responses you've gotten, it looks like you should have waited a while longer.

I view gambling as for people with weak backs and lazy bones to try and swindle money from others. Lotteries are an extra little income tax on the poor. Gambling is a part of the trilogy of vices along with drinking and smoking that leads people into poverty.

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1) No. Not regularly anyhow. For simple fun, I've done a few games (no money involved). But while it's fun in a video game format (where, you know.. I'm not losing any real world currency), the thought of a game within a game within a game isn't super appealing.

2) No. I've played plenty of video poker like I said. I can certainly be a vice for some, especially with the gambling added to it. As far as the ranking you are asking.. I'm not sure what you mean. You mean how much is skill and how much is luck? Or how addicting is it? If it's a skill ranking, then I definitely put it at around a low 2-1ish.



lol wut?

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My wife and I used to go to local bars and restaurants and play in the free tournaments. Texas hold 'em.

We met many of the "regulars" repeatedly, and wound up going to other people's homes and playing there as well.

We also played online. I would typically play for "fun money", my wife played for real money. She had never gambled before, it was new and exciting.

She's a very smart girl, and became very good at it, in all the environments previously mentioned. She won a lot of money online, and we became a bit of a force in all those freebie bar tournaments. We wound up playing with a group that was mostly comprised of dealers of poker at our local casino. One in particular made the WSOP via an online tourney, and my wife came within one hand of doing the same thing while all the rest of us were playing in a bar tourney... My wife and her were discussing hands while we all kibbitzed (sp?) at the bar (She wanted me OUT OF THERE,- house- lol)

You might recall Nonstop observing and commenting upon her play at the various online poker sites. She's good. She could take 5 bucks and turn it into 500 in a few hours, and sometimes much more than that, repeatedly.

I don't suck at it myself, taught her the thing initially, but she left me like a freight train leaving a hobo, esoteric-skills-wise.

I'm a pool player. (So is she- damn good at that also, I corrupt people, lol) That's not gambling, for me, most times. 😶



She got pissed when the government confiscated her account and "lost" all her money. She gave up poker and will not even go get her money back, even though the justice dept. has worked out a deal for her to do so without ramifications (supposedly).

We no longer do any of those activities since the crack-down. The online thing was her "driver", as to the motivation for the local stuff, at the time of the shutdown- it evolved to that, for her.

I would have rather been playing pool the whole time anyway, so I didn't re-prompt her, so I reckon we are done with it all.

It's a pretty decent point. I've heared lotteries being called a stupidity tax before.

As soon as Dakota writes it, though, it sounds like some crazy conspiracy to keep the poor, well, poor, which it obviously isn't.

1. I grew up playing poker at family get togethers. I remember when I was about 5, my mother went to the kitchen for something cooking related, and I sat in her spot for several hands - and she had more chips when she came back. We played penny or occasionally nickel a chip - which was more fun than real gambling. I also played some in college and my early years in the army - usually coming out ahead. Then, after I got married, I played for a while with a few friends, but my luck turned bad. It was no fun, so I gradually quit. I liken poker to fishing - enjoyable when you catch fish/win, but boring when you don't.

2. It depends greatly on the stakes, obviously. I'd say anywhere from 2-9, but I'd say the same basically about roulette or almost any other game. I actually took my weak back and lazy bones (to use Dakota's words) to Vegas once to try to "swindle" some money - thinking I had a "system". It didn't work, though. I actually got about $5,000 ahead, then things turned around. I've thought about trying "card counting", as I have a pretty good memory, but laziness prevailed over greed as usual, and I didn't do it. The stock market also can be anything from a solid investment to an all out crapshoot, depending on how you do it.

I actually agree with Dakota on something - mark it down hahaha. The first part of what he said, the trilogy of gambling, smoking, and drinking leading to poverty - it certainly CAN, but people should be able to control it - as most do in all or at least 2 of the 3 cases - smoking being the possible exception. The conspiracy part, though, I disagree. Sure, the tobacco and liquor companies and the casinos are in it to make money - that's the American Way, but if one group loses or spends more than others, that says more about that group than about the purveyors of sin hahaha.

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My own belief is that poker is, if you are willing to put in the study time, a game where skill will triumph. At least if you play the limit games. However, even then it remains a risky game, one where you need to play a lot to overcome the necessary "bad runs." In the words of Mason Malmuth, poker player AND statistician, it's a game with a really high standard deviation.

Malmuth has computed that if you want to average a gain of $30/hour (my salary, about $60K/year), you're going to need a bankroll of about $75,000. To get that kind of average return at stud, for example, you're going to have to play $15/30 or $30/60 limit games. I don't know about anyone else, but I've never played in a game with that sort of stakes. I can imagine doing so -- if I could figure out how to finance the few thousand hands it would take to get me ready to move up to them -- but I don't see it happening any time soon.

And frankly, I don't like Hold'Em that much. Sorry, Foster and Mrs. Foster, but high stud and high/low stud are better games. But since hold'em is pretty much the only game in town these days, except for play money games on Pokerstars, I'm unlikely to ever get those thousands of practice hands regardless. of whether I find the capital.

No limit poker on the other hand, at least for a player of slightly above average talent at reading hands and somewhat below average talent at reading people, pretty much pure gambling.

And no-limit hold-em...yech!! I don't understand its attraction. Limit hold-em is a pretty good, skill-based game (I just prefer games without community cards), but NL? I just don't get why people want a game where ultimate success depends on your willingness to put everything in your stack at risk repeatedly.

I'm weird. I think the attraction of poker to me is that each handle becomes a puzzle in figuring out the odds. How many spades are out? What's the likely he's got a pair in the hole? Etc. Game theory is a branch of economics, after all.

It is a zero-sum game, of course. If someone wins every hand, someone else has to come out worse off than when they started. And since those who lose, often tend to lose a lot, I can see why Dakota calls it a swindle.

But, not surprisingly, probably, I disagree. If you aren't willing to lose everything you come to the poker table with, you shouldn't sit down. This is why I've never played in Vegas, and why I may never do so. I know I'm not that good.

Poker is a game where play is depends on and is defined by asymmetric information (economic jargon for 'one person knows something that another person can just guess at'). If you don't understand this, if you don't understand that it is a game of having an information edge and exploiting it as much as possible, if you don't understand that other players can and will lie, that they will try to manipulate information to trick you any way possible, then, frankly, you have no business sitting at the table.

Swindling assumes that somehow someone is being tricked against their will. IMO, if you sit at a poker table, you aren't being tricked. And if you sit down to a game thinking everyone at the table has an equal chance of winning on any given hand, you deserve to lose. Because while the quality of hands will, eventually, after a hundred hands or so, even out, skill and knowledge do not. If I ever had a chance to play with Malmuth or David Sklansky or Mike Caro, I probably would. But I'd do so only for the chance to learn something from the pros. Because I know that, unless I happened to very, very lucky with the cards dealt, they'd end up with all my chips.

I don't know where I stand on the "is gambling evil?" question in general. I think trying to convince people that they can get rich without risking anything or without doing anything other than buying a lottery ticket or play a table game is potentially evil (and certainly sinful). And I think that the kind of greed that says one should be able to get something for nothing, that one is entitled to win when taking a risk is a sin.

Where does taking a risk end and gambling start? I don't know.

I know only that there is nothing one can do to reduce the risk of loss at a craps table or a roulette wheel or with a Powerball ticket, nothing other than decide not to play. And I know that the same is not true of blackjack and poker. At those two games, you *can* change the odds by how you play, by knowing when to hold, when to fold, and when not to sit down at all.

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