poker IS gambling

There's no such thing as gambling, you just have to play enough to even out variance. Even casino games, you're just paying $X/game to play whatever you want as long as you do it enough times

Originally posted by fenelonpoker
I would like to open a discussion here.i came to the conclusion,after playing for a few years that nlhe is no different from baccarat,blackjack,punto banco,etc.
If someone can prove to me that skill has anything to do with it,then please,i am waiting,Only people with all their teeth and at least 2 brain cells in good condition,if you play nl2 for 2 months then your opinion will be worth as much as the average pot at those tables,and keep it classy i'm not having a go at anyone or anything,for fuck sakes

Hello. First off, I'm just letting you know that there is basic strategy (that you can fit on a card) that will make you a winning player at blackjack. Not enough to live off of it but you won't lose.

Secondly, poker is different from blackjack because people win consistently enough money to be able to support an amazing life style (consistent as in 3million hands such as a graph previously posted by a fellow member).

Poker is different from baccarat, blackjack, punto banco, etc. and the evidence you are looking for is within forums and videos that multiple sites have introduced already.

--> If you look at the top right of your page, you'll see a language box. Click the arrow and then click on english. You will then be able to finally see that there are buttons leading you to pages where poker is being taught to thousands of english speaking players. There is a ranking system that let's you only watch videos that suit YOUR LEVEL OF KNOWLEDGE IN POKER such as gold and platinum.

Add me as a friend on pokerstrategy.com. I will then take all of your money when we play HU online on pokerstars or soon to be fulltilt after a few thousand hands.

IF YOU HAVE NOT REALIZED WHY IT TAKES SEVERAL THOUSAND HANDS AND ENOUGH MONEY IN YOUR BANKROLL TO OVERCOME THE VARIANCE (LUCK FACTOR) IN POKER, YOU WILL FAIL MISERABLY AT ANYTHING YOU SET YOUR HEART ON IN THE DISTANT AND NEAR FUTURE. No one with a learning curve that awefull will be able to learn anything let alone which button to press on a machine to start cooking a burger at burger king.

Edit: don't try to ignore this post like every other good post that you ignored. You have seen that skill has at least SOMETHING to do with poker but you still keep whining at the community and poker world.

"I HAVE SPOKEEEENNNN"
-Peter Griffin

Originally posted by w34z3l
Just wanted to clear up some inaccuracies I noticed.

1) There is luck in chess. (Advanced players will understand this. You can also bluff in chess.)

2) Blackjack is a game of skill. (The fact that you do not have an edge vs the house doesn't mean it isn't a skill game.)

3) No-one said poker isn't gambling. It's a game both of skill and chance; where skill is the predominant factor over a large enough sample size. (How big this sample needs to be is the only thing that really can be debated.)

Leatherass explains it this way. Can you intentionally lose at a game like roulette? Nope....it's purely chance. Can you intentionally lose at poker? Yup, just fold every hand.

"You can bluff in chess." Ahahahahahahahahaha! Are you crazy? Chess is 100% skill, there's no bluffing. The better player will win.

magicadil, I bluff in chess all the time.

This is my bluff strategy:

Originally posted by w34z3l
Just wanted to clear up some inaccuracies I noticed.

1) There is luck in chess. (Advanced players will understand this. You can also bluff in chess.)

2) Blackjack is a game of skill. (The fact that you do not have an edge vs the house doesn't mean it isn't a skill game.)

3) No-one said poker isn't gambling. It's a game both of skill and chance; where skill is the predominant factor over a large enough sample size. (How big this sample needs to be is the only thing that really can be debated.)

Leatherass explains it this way. Can you intentionally lose at a game like roulette? Nope....it's purely chance. Can you intentionally lose at poker? Yup, just fold every hand.

lol, next you'll be saying there's luck in scrabble

Originally posted by w34z3l Just wanted to clear up some inaccuracies I noticed. 1) There is luck in chess. (Advanced players will understand this. You can also bluff in chess.) 2) Blackjack is a game of skill. (The fact that you do not have an edge vs the house doesn't mean it isn't a skill game.) 3) No-one said poker isn't gambling. It's a game both of skill and chance; where skill is the predominant factor over a large enough sample size. (How big this sample needs to be is the only thing that really can be debated.) Leatherass explains it this way. Can you intentionally lose at a game like roulette? Nope....it's purely chance. Can you intentionally lose at poker? Yup, just fold every hand.

How weak comparison is this? Put 1$ on all numbers....

Roulette would also be able to beat, if there wasnt a max amt of $$

In 1995 Garry Kasparov, probably the best moden day Chess player, played Vish Annand on the top of the twin towers for the PCA world championship.

In one of the games, which became the turning point in the match, GK came up with a brilliant novelty and won the game crushing VA. Daniel King who was the official commentator of the match said :
"I know VA does not drink but today is a good day to start"

Garry Kaparov in his intervew (remember this is the world champion being interviewed after probably his best game of his life) said:

"THERE IS AN ELEMENT OF LUCK IN CHESS...."

I do not have the credentials to argue with him. DO you?

Probably what he meant by that is that not everything go as you originally plan but sometimes you may at "random" spot situations that you haven't thought of before. Now regardless how you see it, that is not luck, that is a skill whether you are aware that you have it or not. There is no luck in chess except for the fact people make mistakes... but can hardly be called luck..it's not chance, it's a human error or lack of capability what we in poker call having an edge. The edge might increase/decrease depending on your opponents mental and emotional stability.

Poker clearly has a luck factor(randomness/chance) but when it comes down to it, it's a game of who has the most knowledge on the game and the ability of understanding how other people play.

Of course ALL of this depends what YOU put into the word luck, it varies from person to person.

hmm so OP is banned already? good lord. or did he just have his status revoked?

Originally posted by Wriggers

Originally posted by fenelonpoker
I would like to open a discussion here.i came to the conclusion,after playing for a few years that nlhe is no different from baccarat,blackjack,punto banco,etc.
If someone can prove to me that skill has anything to do with it,then please,i am waiting,Only people with all their teeth and at least 2 brain cells in good condition,if you play nl2 for 2 months then your opinion will be worth as much as the average pot at those tables,and keep it classy i'm not having a go at anyone or anything,for fuck sakes

Easy, can you lose on purpose at poker?

Can you lose on purpose at roulette?

Ok this was brilliant.
I love these kind of topics.
Obviously there's no point in trying to explain to a person who doesn't listen or who does't want to listen or who is not capable of listening, but there's always so much treasure from the answers <3
I love it.

Originally posted by martinemem

How weak comparison is this? Put 1$ on all numbers....

Roulette would also be able to beat, if there wasnt a max amt of $$

Btw if you bet on every number you are guaranteed to win. Just because you invest more than you won doesn't mean you lost in the context of the analogy.

And yes, if you had an unlimited bankroll + no table cap, roulette becomes a game of skill. Do you have an unlimited bankroll?

Also remember we are talking long term here, not one spin. You are going to lose in the long run playing roulette however you bet, you have no control there. If your argument is you can marginally accelerate your losses by betting on every number, then I concede there is a very small element of skill in roulette. Predominantly it is a game of chance.

Originally posted by w34z3l

Originally posted by martinemem

How weak comparison is this? Put 1$ on all numbers....

Roulette would also be able to beat, if there wasnt a max amt of $$

Btw if you bet on every number you are guaranteed to win. Just because you invest more than you won doesn't mean you lost in the context of the analogy.

And yes, if you had an unlimited bankroll + no table cap, roulette becomes a game of skill. Do you have an unlimited bankroll?

Also remember we are talking long term here, not one spin. You are going to lose in the long run playing roulette however you bet, you have no control there. If your argument is you can marginally accelerate your losses by betting on every number, then I concede there is a very small element of skill in roulette. Predominantly it is a game of chance.

EDIT: nwm...I did not read correctly your response

Originally posted by mineriva
In 1995 Garry Kasparov, probably the best moden day Chess player, played Vish Annand on the top of the twin towers for the PCA world championship.

In one of the games, which became the turning point in the match, GK came up with a brilliant novelty and won the game crushing VA. Daniel King who was the official commentator of the match said :
"I know VA does not drink but today is a good day to start"

Garry Kaparov in his intervew (remember this is the world champion being interviewed after probably his best game of his life) said:

"THERE IS AN ELEMENT OF LUCK IN CHESS...."

I do not have the credentials to argue with him. DO you?

I guess sometimes you make a move that has unintended consequences that you didn't plan for, I suppose that is luck. It is possible to programme a computer to never lose though. So if you're good enough then there's no luck

Originally posted by w34z3l
1) There is luck in chess. (Advanced players will understand this. You can also bluff in chess.

Originally posted by bradomurder
lol, next you'll be saying there's luck in scrabble

Look at minerivers post. Kasparov one of the strongest minds in history acknowledges the element of luck in chess.

Non-chess players sometimes believe grandmasters are machines who can see 10 moves in every direction while there are still many pieces on the board. In reality this is impossible, the human mind simply cannot consider millions (or billions) of board situations before selecting the appropriate move. Instead a strong chess player is guided by principles, which drastically reduce the number of combinations that need to be considered.

Sometimes amongst one of these removed combinations there will be a strong move that is missed, because initially it did not conform to strong principles. Let's say our chess grandmaster decides to look at 10 out of 1 million unorthodox lines that he wouldn't normally consider. One of those 10 works out to be extremely strong. Lucky, huh?

Or let's say our grandmaster thinking 10 moves ahead is torn between two combinations of seemingly equal strength. If he'd calculated 20 moves ahead he might have seen one is a game-winner while the other falls into a trap. Unknowingly he makes the move that wins the game.

Or let's imagine a complete beginner who has no concept of chess. Just by moving pieces, once in a while he's going to pull off an extremely strong move, or perhaps even a combination of moves. It's unlikely, but it happens.

Predominantly, chess is a game of skill. Psychology and luck factor into chess though, any serious player can tell you this.

Anyway @ bradomurder. Not sure if you are trolling or what, but obviously there is luck in scrabble. If you reach into the bag and pull out 7 Z's you are running bad while if you pull out a nicely arranged 7 letter word you are running hot. Predominantly, it is a game of skill.

Originally posted by bradomurder
It is possible to programme a computer to never lose though. So if you're good enough then there's no luck

This is true. Not even any computer is that good though. Not yet.

If OP was deactivated solely because of this thread, well, that's a bit crappy.

I mean sure his opinion is controversial and I definitely do not agree with it, but to merely silence him when actually he has made a thread that has sparked some interesting debates is pretty crappy IMO. If he was banned for another reason or did it himself, my bad.

Well, I am not a native speaker in English, because I am of a Slavic nation.

But I know that in English there is a saying: "preeching to the choir".

You are "preeching to the choir" if you try to persuade people to do something when they already have all the reasons on Earth to do it and when they are actually doing it.

You do not need to go to church and persuade the choir to become Christians...

But here the person who started this thread is doing the opposite of "preeching" to the choir.

He is here, in the "temple of poker" and is trying to convince the "choir" that we must abandon poker, because it is pure gambling and a game of luck.

Well, his rate of success in convincing us that poker is bad will so quickly tend to ZERO that even the function 1/x will be envious about that...

Originally posted by NatRPheM
Probably what he meant by that is that not everything go as you originally plan but sometimes you may at "random" spot situations that you haven't thought of before. Now regardless how you see it, that is not luck, that is a skill whether you are aware that you have it or not. There is no luck in chess except for the fact people make mistakes... but can hardly be called luck..it's not chance, it's a human error or lack of capability what we in poker call having an edge. The edge might increase/decrease depending on your opponents mental and emotional stability.

Poker clearly has a luck factor(randomness/chance) but when it comes down to it, it's a game of who has the most knowledge on the game and the ability of understanding how other people play.

Of course ALL of this depends what YOU put into the word luck, it varies from person to person.

I am sorry but I do not have the ability to read his mind so all I have is his words and he said there is an element of luck so I have to accept that there is. Therefore it is not 100% skill.

Originally posted by bradomurder

Originally posted by mineriva
In 1995 Garry Kasparov, probably the best moden day Chess player, played Vish Annand on the top of the twin towers for the PCA world championship.

In one of the games, which became the turning point in the match, GK came up with a brilliant novelty and won the game crushing VA. Daniel King who was the official commentator of the match said :
"I know VA does not drink but today is a good day to start"

Garry Kaparov in his intervew (remember this is the world champion being interviewed after probably his best game of his life) said:

"THERE IS AN ELEMENT OF LUCK IN CHESS...."

I do not have the credentials to argue with him. DO you?

I guess sometimes you make a move that has unintended consequences that you didn't plan for, I suppose that is luck. It is possible to programme a computer to never lose though. So if you're good enough then there's no luck

The person qouted "Gary Kasparov" is the only human to have beaten the super computer Deep blue which was build, designed and programed to never lose.

I don't think anything is 100% skill though.

Usain Bolt could unluckily trip up in a race and lose to someone less skilled, or right as he's about to start a dropping seagull shit could land in his face.

Because in life literally anything can happen, there is an element of chance in any activity. Does that make every single act of life gambling? Not really in my opinion. I would say that pure "gambling" is where the users actions are not consciously or deliberately influencing the outcome, such as Roulette and slot machines.