Stop denying that poker is gambling

[stripsqueez]

i really dont care too much whether it is gambling or not

i'm a sick gambler - i will play virtually any game if its for money - poker machines upset me but i'll always put a dollar in one if i have nothing better to do - i bet on just about anything all the time - today i had money on 2 horses whilst waiting for fish and chips - i played around 1,500 hands of poker and i just rounded my evening off by backing some aussie rules footy games and the result in a reailty TV show - luckily it kind of offends me to lose so i dont normally do it much unless i know i can win

there is however a decent argument that poker isnt gambling - my brief investigations in to the word gambling indicate that it originally meant the playing of games of chance - poker isnt a game of chance

when you consider the expression "game of chance" it only really has any significant meaning if you contrast it with "game of skill" - to say that there is chance in poker is confusing the issue - virtually every game has chance - the 2 expressions have to be mutually exclusive for them to have sensible meaning - poker is therefore a game of skill - not a game that has skill and chance

i know at least 1 serious poker player who hates to gamble

stripsqueez - chickenhawk

[PokrLikeItsProse]

Poker is a game of skill that involves elements of chance.

Poker can be a good form of gambling in that someone can become a consistent enough winner to play professionally.

Poker can be a bad form of gambling in that, because it is a game of skill, a player can convince himself that he is merely unlucky rather than bad and dump a lot more money than if he sat down at a slot machine where he knew that winning is pure luck. As such, I hypothesize that it entices a higher percentage of problem gamblers who prefer poker than problem gamblers who prefer slot machines to piss away their life savings gambling. The sports book, where it is also possible to make a living, is another place where a problem gambler is more likely to ruin his life, although there are probably way more people with gambling problems who prefer games with a house edge than those who prefer poker or sports betting. (There is, of course, overlap between the groups.) Mind you, this is merely a hypothesis, but I do tend to prefer that gambling be legal, but not legal everywhere.

[ginko]

Poker is gambling in a VERY techinical form. Anything you do is gambling. Driving your car is gambling. DONT DENY IT.

There is gamble to everything, however poker is not like CRAPS or the LOTTO like you seem to imply.


Certain people can play poker like craps, but players like myself rarely every gamble(remember, gambling only exists in the short term).


This is a very gray subject

[mustmuck]

[ QUOTE ]
Yourself - You will have a better shot at never going bust if you think of poker as gambling and are always worried about losing your bankroll. If you buy into the notion that poker is a guaranteed income stream, you can get overconfident and go bust in two ways. First, required bankrolls are calculated using a confidence interval, usually of 1-5%. If you play enough, you will eventually have a downswing in the 95th or 99th percentile, and that can bust you. Second, the size of your positive expectation is dependent upon how much better you are than the opposition. One day (hopefully no time soon), we will likely see a prolonged upswing in the quality of opponents we play against, and you may not notice the change until its too late and you've busted.

[/ QUOTE ]

Can you elaborate on this? I assume these figures are based on something ... do you have a link?

Thanks!

[Colonel Kataffy]

[ QUOTE ]
I think all the folks saying "poker isn't gambling" hurt our chances of getting it legalized, because all the puritans have to do is convince themselves that poker IS gambling and then they feel like they've defeated all our arguments.

[/ QUOTE ]

Puritans have all ready lost the battle against gambling on enough fronts to show that they really don't have an influence in the matter.

Whether its river boats or state lotteries, goverments tend to legalize them as long as they get their cut of the profits.

[memphis57]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Yourself - You will have a better shot at never going bust if you think of poker as gambling and are always worried about losing your bankroll. If you buy into the notion that poker is a guaranteed income stream, you can get overconfident and go bust in two ways. First, required bankrolls are calculated using a confidence interval, usually of 1-5%. If you play enough, you will eventually have a downswing in the 95th or 99th percentile, and that can bust you. Second, the size of your positive expectation is dependent upon how much better you are than the opposition. One day (hopefully no time soon), we will likely see a prolonged upswing in the quality of opponents we play against, and you may not notice the change until its too late and you've busted.

[/ QUOTE ]

Can you elaborate on this? I assume these figures are based on something ... do you have a link?

Thanks!

[/ QUOTE ]

No, I don't have a link - I'll try to find one when I get some time to search, or even better you might try posting a topic in Poker Theory (this forum) or Probability titled "What formulas are needed to calcualte a bankroll?" I'm no expert but as I understand it, you start with your standard deviation (which you can find in Poker Tracker, only keep in mind it needs to be a very large sample) and plug that into a "risk of ruin model", which requires both the SD and a "confidence interval" as inputs. the "confidence interval" is usually measured in SDs - 2 SDs gives you about a 95% confidence level, meaning one out of 20 people will fall outside it, while 3 SDs is about a 99% confidence interval, meaning one in a hundred will fall outside it. If you really want to get into the math of it, it's the same for poker as all other kinds of gambling. Search Google for "Wizard of Odds" + "Risk of Ruin" - put it in just like that and the first result will get you into the Wizard's site (some Video Poker stuff, where risk of ruin is very big).

A simpler way to say what I'm saying is like this - the common rule of thumb on bankroll is 300 BBs. However, there have been a number of posts here about people with 400 BB, 500 BB or longer losing streaks. This can happen even to a solidly winning gambler. If your total bankroll is only 500 BB and you're down 300 already, you'd better drop down in limit and rebuild the roll. If you keep charging ahead because "poker isn't gambling" you could easily go bust.

[mustmuck]

Cheers, I'll do some reading. Thanks for the starting point.

w.r.t. your last paragraph, I totally agree. Regardless of whether you consider poker "gambling" or not, there is obviously risk involved, and to ignore this for any reason would be pretty stupid.

[jba]

[ QUOTE ]
In contrast to casinos, where hundreds of millions of repetitions cause the law-of-large-numbers to guarantee a profit on a positive expectation game

[/ QUOTE ]

false.

casinos are gambling as much as winning poker players.

[Stephen Gray]

You are correct in stating that Poker is gambling. As winning
poker players, our job is to take gambles with a positive expectation. Over a large sample of hands, we anticipate that our results will converge to our expectation. This is no different from the way that
a casino makes its money.

Remember, however, that just because our expectation
is positive does not mean that our results will actually
converge. It is entirely possible that over the next
<insert really big number> hands you could be dealt pocket
aces and lose each time, just as it possible that a casino
could eventually go broke. Entirely possible, but very very unlikely.

The outcome, while likely, is not definite. This is why poker (and even the house side of casino games) is gambling.

[mustmuck]

Has a casino ever gone broke because it was "unlucky"? I just mean because it's games didn't meet expectation, not for other reasons.