Re: Is poker gambling?
Lol at this thread. First time I visit this Forum, so I have to put up my 2c ...
Whether playing poker is gambling or not depends on how much you play. This is because the game has an uncertain outcome over the short run and a certain outcome over the long run. The outcome over the long run is determined by the skill of the player. Let me start with an analogy:
You decide to bet on the toss of a fair coin. You win $1 if it's heads, your opponent wins $1 if it's tails. After the toss you will have staked $1 and have either $2 or $0. The outcome is uncertain either +100% or -100%, so this is gambling. Now you play the game 50 million times, now there's no gamble, because the coin will land 50% heads and 50% tails to within a miniscule percentage of error. We could play this game using a computer simulation, but we wouldn't because we know that we will neither win nor lose money.
Over a short run, variance causes poker players to win or lose. Over the long run, skill or its absence causes wins and losses.
What sample size is sufficient to get rid of the effects of variance? In NLHE, the rarest hands, pairs each get dealt on average 1/221 hands. To be statistically siginificant we need a sample size of c1000. So in 221,000 hands you will get each of the 169 starting hands at least 1000 times. Over this sample you can be 95% confident that your results reflect your ability and not luck. You increase this confidence level the more hands you play.
A regular online pro should be knocking out c35k hands per month, so in 6 months he will have 95% eradicated variance. Over 5 years variance will be irrelevant = no uncertainty in outcome.
For the amateur it's gambling because they don't play enough to remove uncertainty from the outcome.
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