The fun part is learning how to read the other players and make your decisions based upon the cues they provide. If you get good enough at doing that, you can be competitive without ever looking at your own cards.

It's not just a straight-out bluff and the end of the hand. There are several betting rounds, with cards dealt after each round. You might have a decent but not great hand, and you bet with the intention of getting others to fold so they don't improve their hand and beat you. Most poker hands don't even make it to the end. They are folded in the middle betting rounds.

Especially now that entries are in the thousands. Used to be in the hundreds, and in the early days even less.

Spoken like someone who reads the books and never plays. Reading people is a tiny part of poker. Nobody can ever be competitive without looking at his cards...except Matt Damon in Rounders. You can pick up tendencies, betting patterns, etc., but even that is only a very small piece of things. Want to be better at poker? Fold before the flop more often.

Poker is more about luck the closer you get to a single card draw. The further you pull away to a career it gets more about skill.

If you need a single card to give you the winning hand, that is all luck. The skill comes over the long run by maximizing your wins and limiting your losses. I consider myself a fairly good player but I won't win every hand or every tourney or even be up after a session but if you look at the big picture I've won more money than I lost.

Tournaments are an even bigger crap shoot since the increasing blinds force action. If you can just sit there forever waiting for a good start hand you can greatly increase your odds.

Given what I've picked up from you over the years, this sentiment really surprises me. I think it would be right up your alley.

You hit on two points above: profitability and fun.

As far as profitability goes, keep this in mind: there is a really wide gap in the skill level and intelligence of any given player at the table. As you pointed out, probability dictates a lot of what happens. Well, a lot of people don't understand probability, at all. That can be exploited. Think of it in terms of financial management. Based on the pot and the relative size of the bets one can overvalue and undervalue their hand. Your goal then is simply to maximize value. Now this is just a basic part of the overall strategy, but it's essential to understand and is key to consistently beating bad players. Hell, in the day a number of people made a lot of money just being math players and you can still be fairly successful at lower levels.

Since the poker boom of a decade ago, there are a lot more people that understand the math of it, at least fundamentally, and this is where the fun comes in for me. There used to be, and this is a simple generalization, math players and feel players. These days you have to be both to be consistently successful at higher levels. If you play strictly by the rules of probability then other players are going to recognize nice that and adjust their play to manipulate that. So sometimes you have to make decisions that are incorrect according to the math. Once you start getting deeper and deeper into the meta game, it becomes really fun. It is really quite deep.

I really should edit that original post I guess. Sports books are skill based, it isn't gambling if you understand value.

So in your opinion the only activites that count as gambling are those that are purely based on luck? And it ceases to become gambling when you can utilize a skill to win?

I feel like it should interest me, but it doesn't. I don't see the justification to invest time so I can influence the 1% of the equation that I can influence.

With blackjack I lost interest as soon as I learned the "double your bet" trick. If you do that and you have an iron gut, you win every time. But big deal, you win a small amount. It's not worth the effort.

Well, I don't really like the word luck. If you were to say gambling is playing any game where your expected winnings are negative, then I would say yes.

If you're not cheating you're not trying... And "the house" better hope I never end up on they jury. I think it's pussy as all get out to not having to play the game within the game... LOL, THAT group looking for the law to protect them is kinda funny.

Anyway, I'm on the card-counter's side! Scroo the "house"!!!

Actual skill games are still a gamble. If you want to argue that perfectly played blackjack (minus cheating, card counting, etc.) isn't gambling, I'll listen. In that case, you're talking about an opponent (the dealer) that plays by a fixed set of rules. Over the long run, you will hit an exact level of (slightly negative) return.

Playing poker is always gambling, as opponents aren't forced to abide by if/then actions.

An individual hand may be a gamble, but consistently getting your money in with >50% isn't.

Unfortunately, you don't know when you're >50%...at least not consistently. I mean, you can have the nuts every once in a while, but that's the exception.

I've read a couple of books and played in hundreds of tournaments, so you would be wrong about that.

"Nobody can ever be competitive without looking at his cards"? Are you sure about that?

http://www.pokerlistings.com/poker-p...nette-obrestad