A recent article in the Wall Street Journal has started me thinking about how the uninformed and unknowing perceive the game that we all love. The author of the article was pontificating about gambling and how it has become less attractive and in danger of being severely curtailed during these economic hard times. That, in and of itself, is understandable and probably accurate. That said the author goes on to lump poker in with the rest of gambling and talks about how the “poker boom” has topped out and is in decline. Fewer and fewer people playing, fewer new inductees into the game etc. Apparently that worthy hasn’t been in the rooms, games and venues that I frequent.
First let me tell you where I stand before I tell you where I sit. Poker is not gambling. For us in the PPA or elsewhere to go on allowing the uninformed to lump it in with gambling in general is a disservice to the game and to us. Gambling, to my mind is games of chance played against a fixed statistical disadvantage. Poker is no such game. No fixed disadvantage exists prior to the cards being dealt and the actions or lack of same of the players determines the odds, statistics and chance surrounding any given hand. In other words the house will not take from 6% to 20% of your money given that you play long enough to make those odds apply.
Certainly one can gamble while playing poker. Often you hear a player say “let’s gamble”. He/she usually realizes that they are behind in a hand and probably up to a 4 to 1 dog but chooses to let “luck” decide their fate. I never advocate this approach but many do. Those people are the ones that keep the rest of us coming back to wet our beak at the trough of incompetence.
Any accomplished poker player knows that knowledge, skill and ability have much greater weight, in the long run, than simple luck. Yes, that player that just said “lets gamble” and went all in with pocket deuces and was called by pocket Queens, may hit a deuce for a set and win the hand. If he/she continues to play in such a manner, they will undoubtedly be out of the tournament or be calling for “more chips” at the cash game. In the end they will bemoan their “lack of luck” and say that they just can’t win because they get “unlucky”. These self same players would say that the player that consistently cashes in the tournaments and wins at the cash games is just “naturally lucky”.
You and I know that the truth lies somewhere in between. Any good player can get unlucky for a hand, a tournament, or sometimes for weeks. Still, over the long haul, that player will win his/her share of tournaments and cash games. That skilled player will, at the end of the day, have far more money and tournament wins than the unskilled. They are not truly gambling. They know that if they keep track of their income from poker, day to day, month to month and year to year, they will show a steady and significant income.
So we, the membership of the PPA need to gently but firmly correct those that lump Poker in with gambling in general. Whether or not a person is in favor of or opposed to gambling, they need to start considering Poker as a separate enterprise.
Gary R Reed
Colorado State Director
Poker Players Alliance Forums » State - CO
Wall Street Journal Article
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Posted 1 year ago #
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