[Max Buyin]

I hate to chime in late but I got to do it. Chess is just plain different from Poker. Poker has alot of facets to work with that aren't available in chess. As far as gameplay is concerned, they are totally different. However, the thought processes in chess and poker can be alike. You determine your best option given all the possibilities. But, and here is the key thing, chess is not a game of incomplete information...just incomplete thinking. In poker, you may only get a lock hand that cannot be defeated every so often, and even then it may not be enough to make your end worthwhile. Chess is about achiving that lock state on the board and not allowing a stalemate, from controlling space, pieces, and even how many tempos ahead you may be on your opponent. You gather up all these things to bring the game to an end, a lock in your favor. It doesn't take long to figure out that in chess, nothing is ever really close. You may think a game was close because you evenly exchanged off pieces, but this is never so. If your opponent didn't completely think it out in chess, on many levels, all the time, more than you, then they should come to incorrect conclusions and lose. In poker you may very well go through the same thought process, be ahead, and still lose. Now for those of you who talk about computer simulation and chess, computers are forced to calculate heuristics to make a move. Time is their only enemy and will lead to incomplete calculation eventually (granted, computers get faster, processing goes up, game gets harder to beat). All chess players have on computers is the ability to not waste their time plotting the bogus scenarios that a computer must to arrive at the correct conclusion. Poker software, intricate as it may be, is playing a game of incomplete information, and with primary knowledge on how it may make its choices via math or memory, you have a decided edge against such software.

Flame me if you think I'm wrong.