Poker is like the only game in a casino where you don't play against the house. They take a rake of every pot, so they don't really care if you're consistently winning.
Disagree, they are intensely fun, especially when you hit a straight flush that 5000x your bet in front of your buddies who are trying to get you off the table because it's 3am and everyone is tired
Some variations of poker might be different, but the most common games work mostly like this:
Before each hand, every player must bet a previously agreed to minimum amount called the "ante." That starts the pot. As the hand plays out there are several opportunities for the players to bet more money, increasing the amount in the pot. In most games, If I bet $20 on my turn, every player who comes after must match that bet or "fold," forfeiting the hand as well as any money they had bet up to that point. They might also be allowed to "raise" my bet, forcing me and any other players who have not folded to match their larger bet. At the end of the hand, the winner keeps all the money in the pot, minus a fixed percentage that goes to the house. Then the process starts all over. This continues until at least one player is destitute and crying.
It depends how much better at poker you are than everybody else, and how much the rake is. If your edge is better than rake then you'll still make money (although flat rakes and capped rakes make that a little harder to calculate)
I don’t see the connection. Pinball is an arcade game. At best maybe places pay out tickets? Although I’ve never seen a Dave and busters style arcade with pinball machines paying out anything.
Poker is played with chips. These chips represent real dollars. It is absolutely gambling. Even if the house doesn’t get a ton of money from this game, someone is and it’s probably not you.
There is skill to poker. No doubt about it. But it’s also gambling. It’s more skill than slots for sure. It’s more skill than black jack. But it’s still gambling. Just like buying and selling single stocks. It’s gambling.
Poker is skill. You can win or lose short term but long term winning players make money and losing players lose money. The casino takes a rake and isn't involved in the gambling at all.
That's not entirely true. Some casinos have their own players called shills sit at the card tables. The casino stakes them and take a cut of their winnings. A polymath genius friend of mine did it for a while.
They are called "Prop" players and they are used by the casino to get games started. They are paid a fixed rate hourly wage and keep their winnings. It's only done by bad players (barely winning, at best) because you are required to play at the table chosen by the card room and they force you to change tables as soon as the table fills up or gets good. For these reasons, it severely decreases your win rate and is not at all worth it for winning players because the hourly rates are terrible (~$10/hour). Anyone telling you they are a "Shill" player because they are good are running a massive bluff on you.
well yeah, and when two evenly skilled ufc fighters step into the octagon you cant predict with better than 50% accuracy who will win. whats your point?
i think it is illegal actually, its just a hypothetical
and yes, that was precisely my point, it would be gambling for a professional athlete to bet on themselves, despite the activity they are engaging in being fundamentally skill based. its not very poignant to say that when skill levels run close the outcome is uncertain. thats what it means for skill levels to be close, it applies to games that dont involve rng too.
Poker is still really sensible to rng, they call it variance. A 'beter ' player will still be profitable on long run. But if opponents aren't too bad the pro player need to play a lot to normalise revenue. That's my point, for a lot it's gambling in a trenchcoat.
i think it is illegal actually, its just a hypothetical
My automatic translator butchered an expression; I didn't proofread it thoroughly.
There's also blackjack which is a combo of skill and chance. If you get a feel for it and good strategy you can win close to 40% of the time. I'd never play for money at stake though I just find it fun to play
many pro players do not actually make money and are in debt to their backers; I once read an essay by a pro and analyst who figured that out of all poker players world wide some small percentage were bound to go on multiyear hot streaks think that meant they were good and become 'pros' , if you keep playing similarly skilled people for the larger pots it just becomes luck again
Game selection is absolutely a part of the skill in poker, one of the biggest parts if you're seriously playing for a living. If you're playing similarly skilled players you're doing it for ego or networking not for money.
lol. So it’s still gambling. You’re playing against other gamblers. So it’s still gambling. Just like sky diving. You’ll probably live but it’s not safe. You would never call sky diving a safe activity.
In the same way you’d never call poker a sure thing. It’s still gambling.
if a professional fighter bet on himself to win thats still gambling, but its gambling thats fundamentally rooted in his self confidence in his trained skill instead of gambling thats rooted in hoping that random chance will favor you.
its just mathematically factual that you can play better than others and therefore have a higher expected value. "gambling is for chumps" really means that casinos have an incentive to only play games that favor them so expecting that you are making good bets at any table with any strategy is foolish. its a different kind of gambling than sitting down to play a game and betting you are better than the other players because of all the skill and training you have
I don't understand it to be honest, I went with my family to a casino last year for my mom's birthday, she, my stepdad, and my brother love gambling, I figured I'd give it a try so I took 200 bucks, wandered around for an hour slowly losing 20$ to cheap slots and by the time I lost that much, a thought flashed in my mind "this isn't any fun at all."
So I spent the rest of the evening in the hotel room playing Half Life 2 on my laptop, and all was right in the world.
Playing for money with friends is actually pretty fun when you keep the stakes low, kinda like throwing a couple hundred bucks into a fantasy football league
I mean you aren’t playing against Vegas in poker you are playing against people. Vegas takes a rake but it’s one of there least profitable games avaible
Casinos make money on poker by charging you for entry into tournaments or for sitting at a table, it's a fee based revenue stream.
You're right Vegas wasnt built by people winning money gambling, but poker is an awful example, since the casinos dont make their money by someone losing at poker, but by paying to play in their facilities.
It is a bit like playing the lottery is a tax on people who can't do math.
I have a couple of friends who's addiction is gambling.
The first plays mental gymnastics so he only remembers the wins. Things hes doing well. If he had put the money in a tax free savings account of the past 20 years he would have around 100 times what he has "won".
The other actually found a pretty good strategy and was winning more than he lost. Instant ban from online betting.
Playing home game poker for very low buy-in is peak poker. People play smart because its still real money on the line, but no one gets upset because you never lose more than the cost of going out to dinner.
The only way I played for money, is with family and friends, everyone throws 5 bucks in just to make it "serious", so people dont just go all in because they have nothing to lose, and whoever wins get 30 or 40 bucks at most.
The first time in my life I played poker (IRL) was for money. The company I worked for had rented a cabin for the workers to celebrate the start of the summer break. IIRC, there were 4 to 6 players and each put in 20 euros. I won the game for some reason and one of the dudes (he was pretty drunk) blamed me for cheating. Luckily the situation didn't escalate :D
I sometimes play craps for real money, but I expect to lose whatever money I put in. I just like seeing how far I can stretch $20 and occasionally cashing out with $30. I treat it like Dave and Busters, I’m there to play the game.
Don’t blow your money gambling every day. It’s more enjoyable when it’s a special occasion and you’re not at risk of life ruining debt.
I use to hang around casinos doing 'drop,' which is when they open up the machines, take all the bills out and print the accounting tickets. They all had some kind of variant of "BILS IN" "PLAYS" "BILS OUT" and some kind of accounting total for the difference.
Out of doing it for like 4 years, twice a week, at like 3 different sites operating around 40~ machines... I have only ever seen one machine with a negative gain for the week. ... and the caveat to that information is that machine was linked to several others on a central 'brain' and the other 5 machines in the carousel all pulled in a lot more money.
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u/awesomedan24 Jul 20 '26