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EXPERT VIEW - Is Poker Gambling
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28 May 2006
I play online poker with a frequency that some close to me have classified as unhealthy. They simply do not understand that this is a potential career, but only if you play enough hands (millions) for the probability theory to kick in. So, I find myself defending poker as more than mere gambling, as so much more than a game of chance.
To utter the word poker in the same sentence as mindless gambling games that you find run by casinos like roulette, or run by governments such as the lottery is outrageous and nonsensical. Those are games of pure chance where there is no skill involved. Roulette is the pimped-out con-artist cousin of slot machines. If the lottery was personified it would be a mugger who preys only on the simple-minded and infirm.
There are other gambling pursuits that can involve an element of skill of course, but none of them come close to poker: blackjack, horseracing, and sports betting. The problem with betting on these outcomes besides the huge luck factor that renders most outcomes unpredictable is that there is a built-in edge that directly favors your opponent every time you play. There are some people who are willing to shrug this off as a petty inconvenience. We call these people chronic gamblers and know that unless they get very lucky for a prolonged period of time, which is statistically improbable, they will eventually die broke.
Every bet they take comes with the odds stacked against them. In blackjack the difference is small but it`s still there. In sports betting it is a whopping 10%, and in horse racing it is closer to a crippling 20% and impossible to overcome. The most successful horse racing handicappers are journalists who make a living writing about their picks as opposed to betting on them.
Poker also has a built-in edge that you have to overcome, but it does not favor any one of your opponents. You do not play against the house, or the casino, or the government. You play against other poker players, all of whom are taxed for their winning hands. That tax takes the form of a rake or a tournament fee and every player has to beat it. The rake is a very small percentage when you play at the highest levels online but it remains a factor, and explains why a lot of good poker players cannot make a living at the game.
The key aspect of poker is that you can play against a table of opponents where the difference in terms of ability favors you by more than the rake. In this scenario you are so superior to your opponents that you will actually overcome the levy on those winning hands and leave with a net profit, and you will be able to do this consistently.
In the long-run if you only played poker you could indeed end up winning overall. Of course most poker players are gamblers by nature and do not limit themselves to poker alone. They enjoy sports betting, taking prop bets during poker games that tend to dwarf the pot they`re playing for, or betting on anything that moves in an unpredictable sort of way. So a top poker player like Stu Ungar dies as broke as your typical horse player but there are extenuating circumstances that should exonerate poker when you`re reaching a verdict.
Now, to those who do not play poker the logic is starting to look a little shaky, and maybe they have a point. Here`s a thought-experiment for all of you who enjoy the game of poker and think of it as a game of skill:
Your wife asks you to deposit your (plural) life savings in the bank. She hands you $50,000 and you promise to go straight to the bank. Your name in this story is Jack. Along the way you see a perfect no-limit cash game where there are nine idiots playing and one empty seat. You sit down, because this is easy money, and put the $50k in play. You know your wife would approve because opportunities like this only come around once in a blue moon.
You play for twenty minutes and you`re up to $75k. It`s a beautiful dream. The guys are so dumb that you can even see their cards sometimes because they hold them out so far from their chests. You are in a hand against one opponent with the same stack as you. You hold A-A. The flop comes A-5-6. You put in a big bet and he calls. The turn is a J. You put in another big bet. Your opponent moves all-in and now the whole $75,000 in on the line. You know you`re in front. You know you have the best hand right now. You then see that your opponent holds 7-8. He needs a 4 or a 9 to win. He has 8 outs, which will come 18% of the time. What do you do? What do you do?
Most poker players would call here, even though a loss would mean they lose every cent they have. Because they have the best of it, and when you have the best of it by that margin it isn`t gambling. But what is it? The wife in our little story would definitely think it was gambling, especially if you lost.
Could you walk away from that situation? I know that I couldn`t, and that`s why I try not to put up $75k in no-limit cash games. Should you walk away? That`s a much harder question to answer.
Now I want you to imagine that there were no cards involved. You sat down at a table with $75,000 and a man offered to double it if you played Russian roulette once. Your odds of shooting yourself are similar to losing to the suck-out straight draw. You will lose the bet 1 in 6 times and win it the other 5, but you`re being paid out at 1 to 1. This is still poker. Those who think that poker is a card game are welcome to play poker against me any time. Those are great pot odds offered by the Russian Roulette dude. The implicit pot odds (that you will die if you lose) will, however, be immediately grasped by non-poker players and non-gamblers alike.
I wonder if men like Doyle Brunson or Ted Forrest, true gamblers who also happen to be poker players, would take this bet? I`d also like to film it as a reality TV series and make a fortune in the process. We could call it "Shoot Yourself For $1 Million" and get Howie Mandel to host. "Bullet, or no bullet" he could intone over and over. To those of you who do not get this allusion your TV life is about to become so much richer once "Deal Or No Deal" and its arithmetically handicapped contestants hits your screen.
If it was simply a question of money a lot of poker players would jump at the opportunity, even if that one unlucky shot cost them every cent they had. Their feeling is that as long as that type of game exists they could recoup their losses and ultimately win in the long-term. If it was fatal first time round that might be pause for concern, at least for some of them.
I see this same look in my wife`s eyes every time I tell her about a suck-out that cost us a mortgage payment. "I was 85% to win, and the pot odds were 2 to 1 in my favor" I tell her imploringly, as if that makes my loss somehow more palatable. "Poker is all just luck anyway," she responds in the language of the ignorant.
It`s not all luck, but if you don`t think poker and gambling are closely related then there`s a new reality show idea I`d like to discuss with you. Somehow, though, I don`t think that finding willing contestants will be my biggest problem...
Posted by: Marc Weinberg at 11:20
0 Comments
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