Is poker the work of the devil?

bops

Serious question (honestly) - is it degenerate gambling, but we sugarcoat it with happiness and the whole skill debate?

aren't we just there to break our opponents and them us?

are we not just feeding the the gaming houses with ridiculous amounts of rake?

I love playing poker - really love it!! - i don't gamble on horses or football or whatever - actually i don't gamble - I just play poker (???). (OK I do enjoy the odd spin of a roulette wheel and enjoy PLO (lol) )

I've been running really well lately and walk out of card clubs with a big satisified head on me - all jolly and thinking how great i am with all my good play and laughing at the few donkeys i've felted along the way...but today i just got thinking...

...you know the way when there's a big pot and some guy looses everything and rants/moans and goes off home broke - while your thinking "sure it's poker (puke phrase i know), happens us all...that's life etc etc"

Ok, now put the same fella in the bookies - walks in and puts all his money on a even money shot - it looses and he rants/moans and goes off home broke - whay do you think then?? (we'll i think, poor fella, but only himself to blame, he has a serious problem, pity his family, should get help etc)

do you see where i'm comming from??

I would, in general, exclude tournament poker from this, but is the thoughts of a couple of hundred people paying 3,500 quid (exclude the qualifiers etc) a bit frightening?? don't gimme that "it's all relative" crap - 3.5k is 3.5k

It just seems to me that on the outside poker is all fun fun fun - game of skill etc, but in the back of my head there's a little voice telling me that it's all wrong/bad/evil


i'm sure there has been similar discussions in the past (it would be a bit frightening if there hasn't imo)

love to hear some of yer views

cheers
bops (in unusual humour )

BigCityBanker

bops wrote:

Ok, now put the same fella in the bookies - walks in and puts all his money on a even money shot - it looses and he rants/moans and goes off home broke - whay do you think then?? (we'll i think, poor fella, but only himself to blame, he has a serious problem, pity his family, should get help etc)

In poker an even money shot is actually an even money shot and the book is bound at the upper limit of 100%

In racing/sports betting an even money shot is probably an 11/10 shot, may be a 5/4 shot and sometimes bigger.

In short - sprots probability is unquantifiable to the same finite degree with which we can quantify poker odds. Unlike poker, Sports books are not bound at the upper limit at 100% which means that by playing in the market you are immediately accepting a -EV situation.

charlesanto

bops wrote:

Serious question (honestly)
are we not just feeding the the gaming houses with ridiculous amounts of rake?
bops (in unusual humour )

Yes

Good players can beat the rake, but 95% (wild guess) of players are "just feeding the the gaming houses with ridiculous amounts of rake"

Ste05

Bankroll management is what seperates the degenerates/gamblers from Poker players

BobSloane

Poker is truely a game spawned of Satan. Rock n' Roll is his music. He's got all the fun stuff. I'm gonna start taking my electric guitar to poker games and shredding some killer riffs screaming "Alll-in motherfcukerrr!!!!" at my opponents. I might get some freaky contact lenses too to boot.

Seriously though - playing with money you can afford to lose(perhaps emotionally as well as financially) is fine. Playing with the mortgage or the money saved for juniors kidney transplant is not fine. If you love the game I don't think its a problem. Phil Laak summed it up nicely on a recent Poker After Dark when he said you could give the people at the table a billion dollars and they'd still play poker. Its not about the money, its about outwitting your opponent. Which is why the posters here that play 2/4 or 5/10 or whatever can post on 5c/10c hands. Its all relative to the size of the blinds and your opponents.
Dang - I gave you the "its all relative" crap

Mellor

bops wrote:

I love playing poker - really love it!! - i don't gamble on horses or football or whatever - actually i don't gamble - I just play poker

Summed it up nicely yourself

Oodges

Its not about the money, its about outwitting your opponent[\quote]

I don't agree with this at all, at least not concerning my motivations for playing. If it wasn't about the money, I wouldn't play 1/10th as much as I do. Particularly playing on the net at medium stakes, where most players aren't very good and little thinking is required to beat them.

I have heard one or two people in all seriousness say poker is the "work of the devil", it "should be banned" etc and I find that a little galling,
people don't play without the knowledge they can lose all the money they bring they bring to the table, and in my view anyone who is irresponsible enough to gamble with money they can't afford to lose is a fool. People then say things like "but what about if a gamblor had kids, their father losing all his income etc etc" and to be honest, my first thought is, he doesn't give a flying fcuk about them if he's willing to risk the financial stability of his family on a game of cards.

Which brings us to the "compulsion" aspect of gambling, I've always found this extremely difficult to understand, is it a physical addiction to the adrenaline rush of "OMFG I just bet my house on black, big bucks big bucks no whammies no whammies!" or a mental -I'm just unlucky, it'll turn around and I'll get the money back etc etc. I am genuinely interested, so if someone knowledgable on these kind of things like hotspur could fill us in, that'd be cool.
And why the hell should the fact they have a "compulsion" somehow absolve them from being an IDIOT. I was appalled when I saw the BBC panorama documentary and that women who stole huge amounts of money from her employer got a warning and a therapy course and somehow escaped jail time because all the money she stole -(in the 100s of thousands of pounds) was frittered away on gambling.
To draw an analogy; Paedophiles, they have a compulsion, they have a sickness, they can't help it, they're addicted to sexual intercourse with children, but you don't hear of any bands of hand wringers excusing them from the illegal stuff they do because of their "compulsion". Instead people call them evil etc etc. -(not that I'm defending paedophiles, the analogy strictly being about "compulsion")
Anyway circling back towards the point: is poker evil? In my opinion, No, no more than the stock market is. It's up to adults to make their own responsible financial decisons.

Oodges

I also think saying that ""it's all relative is crap" is really misinformed. Money has no absolute value, it's a question of what you can buy with it. Sure E3500 is "a lot of money" to most of us on this forum, but I'm sure none of us would think twice about spending 100 euro on a tournament, whereas that is a hell of a lot of money to most people in Bangladesh.

nicnicnic

I thought you were a shrink bops, interesting are perhaps overanalyzing here

hotspur

Oodges wrote:

Which brings us to the "compulsion" aspect of gambling, I've always found this extremely difficult to understand, is it a physical addiction to the adrenaline rush of "OMFG I just bet my house on black, big bucks big bucks no whammies no whammies!" or a mental -I'm just unlucky, it'll turn around and I'll get the money back etc etc.

Well addicts, including gambling addicts, are a heterogeneous group (that doesn't mean they are not gay ). Different people get different things out of their addiction. There are some who are addicted to the rush, but very many others become addicted to gambling because it allows them to dissociate from themselves for the duration of their gambling and escape from negative feelings and loneliness.

I'll give an example from drug addiction, estimates vary but it considered that the great majority of females who are drug dependent have been sexually abused as children, with some studies finding as high as 98%. I know people who work with heroin addicts who have said that they don't think they have ever met one who wasn't abused as a child. These people aren't in it for the rush, they are in it for self medicating and dealing with trauma and pain. Most gambling addicts are very troubled individuals also with high comorbidity with other addictions and psychiatric problems.

I know we tend to look at these compulsive gamblers as idiots, and sometimes they are, but the experience of addiction counsellors / therapists suggests that they are an above average intelligence group. Their problems are not lack of intelligence they are psychological / emotional / social / behavioural. They are not problem gamblers because they are fools, and even if they were I think we are too harsh on unintelligent people in society - it's a form of discrimination, stupid people deserve to lose their money because they are stupid kind of thinking.

To answer your question about whether it is a physical addiciton. It's kind of a red herring this as we are not seperately physical and psychological beings. The physical symptoms of addiction are thought to be tolerance and withdrawal. Both of these are assessed in a clinical diagnosis of problem / pathological gambling. Many of the type of gamblers who get a buzz out of it do need to bet with greater amounts to feel the same thrill and so become tolerant, and almost all problem gamblers will experience withdrawal symptoms but obviously not to the same physical extent as say heroin addicts (but even heroin withdrawal is not a cut and dried issue). So problem gamblers share defining features of physically addicted chemical addicts. The ultimate neural reward pathway is almost certainly the same for all addictions anyway.

It's a difficult issue with problem gambling and fraud / crime to pay off debts. I'm not comfortable with people getting off free because they have an addiction, but I think it does mean there are extenuating circumstances. Many people who would otherwise never have committed fraud do so as the only way out of huge debts, actually it's not the only way out - the massive suicide rate among problem gamblers is the other way out. Sometimes a judge has to decide beyond punishment and consider whether society needs to be protected from this person or is a custodial sentence really appropriate for a one time non-violent act from an otherwise decent person who is suffering. Also many instances of employee fraud are not prosecuted because the company doesn't want the bad publicity. In Australia in 2006 of all instances of company fraud known of 22% were due to gambling!

There are a bunch of people addicted to poker, mostly online poker due to the fact that it is a more immersive sensory experience than live poker, you can zone out and get away from yourself for a few hours. And also you can tell yourself that it isn't really gambling and that you can make money.
But it isn't evil, it's not the work of the devil, and either is alcohol or any drug. It is gambling alright, but gambling isn't a bad thing for most people who enjoy it non-problematically. It's important not to pretend that it is not a problem for some though, and these people aren't always stupid or crazy or freaks, they are just unhappy people who have become dependent on the experience in their lives.

Ooh you know Jonny Lodden (bad ip) he is a massive sports gambler now, check out his now updating blog:
http://www.johnnylodden.com/
Check out what it's like for Sbrugby / Aba to be on a $1.2m downswing:
http://www.cardrunners.com/fusetalk/blog/index.cfm?forumid=31

And check out a USA Today article from this week about 3 fools gettin smoked by a college student over a gambling debt in Wisconsin:
http://tinyurl.com/2d5ew2

Oh and although it's my least favourite thought and ill advised to ever state it, a little part of me feels sorry for paedophiles. I'd rather lock an offender up for life rather than run a 1% risk of reoffending, but I'd feel somewhat sorry for who they are and what caused it.

And since I'm linking things for no reason, here's a picture I love:
http://pics.livejournal.com/tongodeon/pic/0004xhys/

phantom_lord

hotspur wrote:

Check out what it's like for Sbrugby / Aba to be on a $1.2m downswing:
http://www.cardrunners.com/fusetalk/blog/index.cfm?forumid=31

Its funny I don't even care about the money

balla

Oodges

thanks, much appreciated.

Solksjaer

there is no devil, no Santa, no easter bunny, hmmm on 2nd thoughts there IS an Easter bunny, she'll be in Lapellos next weekend....


bops, as mr Mackey says, drugs are baaad.


Poker is actually a very good game and god loves all who play, he bestows upon the average table 5 donks and 3 fishes, these will feed all , if you believe. In fact it has been loong thought that upon electing a pope the conclave have a freezout to decide the winner. They then burn the deck to declare the winner, Pope 'River' Ratzinger ln fact luckboxed his way to the popedom via A gutshot straightdraw. Cardinal 'bad beat' Joeslitski had a set.

:eek: :eek: :eek: my god what am I saying, POKER IS THE WORK OF THE DEVIL :eek: :eek:

pok3rplaya

Congrats to hotspur for writing a great post. I know it was great cos I tried to read it and I couldn't in my present state. But no seriously man you do good work. gg wp nhgg

BobSloane

Solksjaer wrote:

. In fact it has been loong thought that upon electing a pope the conclave have a freezout to decide the winner. They then burn the deck to declare the winner, Pope 'River' Ratzinger ln fact luckboxed his way to the popedom via A gutshot straightdraw. Cardinal 'bad beat' Joeslitski had a set.

I think I heard about this at the time. Ratzinger moved all in with 5d7d on a flop of 3 6 J rainbow. Joeslitski insta called with 66 and ran to the rail high fiving his pals. Turn was a K and as Joeslitski shouted "one time!!!" at the dealer he turned the 4 to send him packing. Stacks were effevtively equal at the time. Many suggested that the dealer was a quick thinking card mechanic who was all too aware of the contraversy that would ensue if a new pope was elected with a set of 6s