[Article] Is Playing Poker ReallyGambling?

[PokerEveryDay]

Almost anything you do in life where there is some kind of expected return is a gamble to some extent.

Poker without a shadow of a doubt is gambling.

[Zetack]

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When a layman asks, I always say, "Poker is not gambling the way I play it." For the expert, no-limit, Texas Hold 'em players, they are the house with a house edge just like running a dice table. Would you say running a dice table is gambling when you are a cinch winner over a short range of time? Would you say being a bookmaker with a tremendous edge is gambling?

The gamblers called businessmen have always looked down on the businessmen called gamblers. Those people called gamblers or professional gamblers are the ones who always take the best of it. They are not gambling. If they book enough action within their bankroll, they are cinch winners. It is that way for poker players at all levels. I don't have any gamble in me. I wouldn't flip you for fifty cents. I do like to bet on those damn race horses every now and again. Then I am gambling, taking the worst of it, and not expecting to win. Poker is recreational gambling for most people. But for the top players, it is not really a gamble. For them, it is about self-control, self-efficacy.

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The problem is that people are confusing two different ideas in this thread and labelling them both gambling.

The first concept is gambling.
The second concept is taking a chance or risk.

You can play with the definition, if you want, but gambling, essentially, is wagering on the outcome of an uncertain event. By this definition, or any other reasonable definition of gambling, poker is gambling.

However, if you are a winning player, playing on adequate bankroll for your stakes, and are a winner because you consistently have an edge in the games you play, then you can argue that you are not taking a chance because over time you will make money.

But you are still gambling.

Is the house gambling with its customers when it sets up a roulette wheel? Of course. Is it (assuming it has adequate capitalization, and will have large enough pool of costomers) taking a chance? Of course not, the math guarratees that it will make money.

I don't see why this is confusing to people.

Gambling with a postive expectation is still gambling. Given the right circumstances (adequate bankroll, adequate number of trials) it is not a risk. I suppose one could say you are gambling but not taking a gamble. Therein lies the confusion, I suppose.

--Zetack

Edit: To the folks who say that poker is not gambling, I would offer up this thought. If poker is not gambling because over time you have a positive expectation, then the only time you are gambling is when you take 1-1 odds on 50% outcomes, or you are are planning on engaging in an inadequate number of trials on some wager.

So, suppose I put up a dollar and one cents against a dollar on a single flip of a coin. By the above peoples reckoning, I'm gambling. Suppose instead we agree to flip the coing three trillion times. According to the above reasoning, I'm no longer gambling, as it is now certain that I'm going to lose money and I just need to keep receiving free credit card offers until the Sun blows up so I can keep up the -EV wagering.

This hypothetical is nonsense of course. It's gambling either way, whether it's one flip or three trillion flips.

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Thanks for the replies on my little article. I found you to be the one who actually perceived the point I was trying to get at. I don't deny the fact that you are risking your money even though you are in favorable odds when playing good poker because you never know what will come. However, think about it. Given the two circumstances (proper bankroll and favored odds +@ discipline) in a long term, I don't see how it can be uncertain outcome. Basically the whole point of this post was to contradict the definition of gambling based on the mathematical proof on my head.

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Unfortunately for your argument, you aren't wagering on the outcome that you say is certain. You you aren't wagering on the long term outcome of your poker playing. I would buy your argument if you had a wager that said, "I'll put up ten thousand dollars agains your ten thousand dollars that over my next ten million hands of poker I will, in the net, make money", and assuming you were properly bankrolled for the games you played, had a positive expectation in the games you played, ten million hands being enough to essentially guarantee your edge would result in a positive result, and, as you say, you have the right discipline.

[I concede the point based on all your assumptions being true, in real life, of course, this wager would still be gambling because you could not be assured of being properly bankrolled, disciplined, having an edge in your games, or even being able to reach ten million hands so the outcome would still be uncertain, even though you might have a great expectation of winning].

However, when you are playing poker you are not wagering on the longterm outcome of your poker playing, the long term outcome is simply the result of your immediate wagering. You are betting on the outcome of individual hands. Thus poker is still gambling, because you are wagering on uncertain results (this bet, is dependendent on uncertain results of this hand).

[Zetack]

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If gambling is wagering on an uncertain outcome, virtually every thing we do, and certainly every game we play for money, including professional sports, is gambling. If the outcome were certain, why play the game?

Gambling in a more technical (and legal) sense, is wagering on an outcome OVER WHICH YOU HAVE NO INFLUENCE OR CONTROL, or insufficient control to positively affect the outcome.

By this more precise definition, poker is not gambling because in poker the player influences the outcome of the hand by influencing the actions of the other players (your bet or raise induces a fold), and controlling their own actions (folding, and hence losing less money than another player who was not smart enough to fold).

Of course chance is an important factor in poker, but the lesson of thousands of players and millions of hands is that chance does not determine by itself who wins and loses at poker, the decisions of the players is the more important factor. And the decisions of the players are not "chance."

Blackjack has an element of skill, but in blackjack that element of skill cannot overcome the math/probabilities - no matter how good you play, you are always subject to the next card (even card counters, they just play long enough for the chance to even out). The element of folding is what places poker just above blackjack in the range of chance v. skill precisely because it is a way to overcome the chance element completely.

Skallagrim

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Yes, Skallagrim - Thanks for the collaborative comment. How many of you think that paying tuition bill for school is gambling? You never know that you will end up making a lot of money when you graduate which is uncertain outcome. However, if you are smart and determined you will gain a lot more when you graduate. At the same time, if you don't have sufficient enough bankroll to invest yourself into the school that is also stupid too because you won't be able to buy or do anything else because you don't pay other things (rent, car payment, and etc.) then you go broke. Will you blame your odds when you get broke this way?

-LuxuryMaster
-Blogspot: luxurymaster.blogspot.com

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I'm simply stumped that both of you are ignoring the element of wagering. You seem to conflating the idea of taking a risk (sometimes called taking a gamble, which I suppose leads to the confusion) with gambling.

Participating in professional sports is gambling? I show up to the park, I play the game, I draw a salary. There isn't any wagering here, ergo its not gambling.

When you go to university and you pay your tuition, you haven't laid a wager with the university. If you get a good job after college the university doesn't pay you off. Your tuition is simply a fee for a service provided (instructors, classrooms, computer labs, etc) and not a wager of any kind. Ergo, paying tuition is not gambling.

My wife and I went to an antique expo, last weekend. It cost five bucks each to get in. The outcome was uncertain, would we be able to find any furniture we liked? Would be be able to afford it, or find the price worth the furniture? As it turned out, we bought two pieces. On our way out the Expo didn't hand us each ten bucks (or any money at all), because we simply didn't wager anything, even though we spent money on an uncertain outcome. Money spent plus uncertainty of outcome, does not equal gambling.

--Zetac

[Skallagrim]

My real point, missed by the lot of you, is that you are not arguing over what poker is (poker is poker), you are arguing over what the definition of gambling should be.

Since "gambling" generally has a "bad" connotation with most folks, and is illegal in most places, I prefer a definition of gambling that excludes poker.

Take a linguistics course if you still dont understand what I am saying.

PS - most pro sports contracts have "incentive" clauses where extra money kicks in if certain goals are met. While this doesnt cost anything directly, it is used to get the player to otherwise agree to a lesser salary upfront. And you and your wife didnt risk that $5 only if going to the fair would have been just as worthwhile had you not found anything. So while of course putting something of yours at risk is needed to qualify for most forms of gambling, what that something must be is also open to debate, which is why the broad definition this thread started with (risk on an uncertain outcome) would, IMHO, include those things.

[zmunimaker]

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Of course its gambling, calculated, but still gambling.

And don't we kid ourselves, poker would be a loosing game for everyone even if there was no rake. Due to the limits of our bankrolls, risk or ruin is always > 0, no matter the size of the roll or the player's edge. Its only a matter of time.

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WOW - I never post but I have to after this. You are an absolute moron and have no clue whatsoever how a theory applies to the real world. Do we all get to play an infinite amount of poker? If not, then this theory has zero application here. People as stupid as you must be probably shouldn't even be allowed to learn theories like this because they just apply them in the completely wrong way. We are all that much dumber for having read your opinion on this.

As for the original question of gambling or not gambling, I believe that it certainly is gambling but that doesn't mean that it isn't something that can be profitable. The stock market is gambling too, but just about everyone thinks that that is an ok avenue to take to make money. Even putting your money into a US Treasury bond is gambling to a certain extent, any finance professor will tell you that there is no such thing as risk-free in the real world.

[LuxuryMaster]

Sorry, I am new here. I will keep that in mind [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Do you still play $1/2 NL Yeti?

[SaxonDo]

Sure, gambling with gambler's

[Zetack]

As for the original question of gambling or not gambling, I believe that it certainly is gambling but that doesn't mean that it isn't something that can be profitable. The stock market is gambling too, but just about everyone thinks that that is an ok avenue to take to make money. Even putting your money into a US Treasury bond is gambling to a certain extent, any finance professor will tell you that there is no such thing as risk-free in the real world.

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Buying and selling stocks is not gambling, even if certain people treat it as if it were gambling. When you buy a stock, you aren't wagering. With out wagering there is no gambling. Taking a risk, as I have said above, is not synonimous with gambling.

If you buy a stock and it goes up, you haven't won a bet. The person who sold it to you doesn't come back to you and pay you off. You bought something, it increased in value, then maybe you sell it, maybe you don't, but in anycase you never bet with anybody that it would increase in value so you haven't been gambling.

Heck, maybe, the guy who sold the stock used the money to buy a stock that gained more money than the one you bought from him. I don't see you giving the seller any more money at this point for having won his gamble with you ... because he didn't bet you anything.

We often call taking a risk a gamble. That's an idiom. It doesn't make taking a risk gambling.

Wagering, people, wagering. Without wagering there is no gambling.

--Zetack

[vhawk01]

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do YOU know what "risk of ruin" is?

if any player has a probability of winning < 1 there is a positive risk of ruin over a finite number of events. that does not mean it's a losing game for _everybody_. i could have a 99% chance of winning in any game and i would be a losing player by your definition. the only case in which "everyone is going to go busto eventually" is a game in which players risk 100% of their bankrolls 100% of the time.

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Your missing the point.

In most other games, say golf, your chance of ruin is effectively 0 because even if you go down a hundred times in a row, you can stand up a hundred and one.

In poker the hundredth time is going to kill your roll. Busto, no more pokah. Sure you can take a stake. But we are talking about the limited nature of funds available in this world.

However, its a stretch, but we can extrapolate the term "bankroll" from poker into the term "physical fitness" in athletic sports to some extent. Do you need proof to say that Michael Jordan is a loosing play in a long run or you can come to this conclusion yourself? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

And this is exactly what I am talking about in poker. With proper bankroll management and the right state of mind we can delay the inevitable for a very long time, but someday somewhen the dice is going to roll 6 a bazillion number of times in a row and you go busto. Simple? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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"Move down in stakes and rebuild."

You lose. Of course, we'd have to assume there are infinitely small stakes to move down to, which is approximately as ludicrous as assuming anyone is going to play poker for 10^74 years.

[vhawk01]

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The statement that all players will eventually go broke depends on two assumptions:

1.) That each player plays for an infinite amount of time.
2.) There is an infinite stream of money coming into the poker world.

If these are satisfied, every player will eventually bust out at some point. The stakes they wager each hand and their present bankroll are irrelevant.

Say you had $1,000,000 and only played 1/2 limit holdem, you would eventually hit a losing streak so bad that you would lose it all. Since you are playing for an infinite amount of time this is inevitable.

Now obviously our poker playing lifetimes do not satisfy condition #1 and never will, so this is really just an academic discussion.

-Daddys_Visa-

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No. Once you reach $500,000, you move down to .50/1.00. And once you reach $250,000 you move down to .25/.50. Thus, you will never, ever, ever go broke. You might, in billions and billions of years, find yourself playing a very unsatisfying .000001/.000002 game though.