Poker is Beautiful

When I first started to play Texas hold ‘em, I read in a book that poker is extremely complex, even more so than bridge. Having played some bridge, my first reaction was to respectfully disagree with the author. Pretty much anyone can learn how to play any form of poker in five minutes, whereas I had to read an entire book just to play bridge at the beginner level. Some time later I came across a post at rec.gambling.poker that supported my contention. The poster argued that poker is not like basketball, where there is a huge range of skill levels, from klutz to Michael Jordan. In any limit poker game there are only four options: fold, check, bet, or raise. So even the best player is far too restricted to distinguish himself much from the novice. After one and a half years of playing poker and reading books, I am forced to radically revise my initial assessment.

When someone is better than you at basketball, you can immediately see why you are the underdog. You can observe all the steals, slam dunks, and turn around jumpers that the guy makes as he wipes the floor with you. Poker is different. The skillful poker player makes moves that a novice cannot even begin to identify as being skillful, let alone attempt to emmulate. I'm not going to delve into the myriad factors that must be considered, nor the process by which those factors must be analyzed in order to derive the correct action at the table. I will just say that they are not intuitive and must be learned through careful study and application.

Another important aspect of poker is that of chance. Even if you play expertly, you can still lose a lot of money. As a general rule, a professional poker player should have at least 300 big bets in his bankroll. That means that if you are going to play $20/$40 hold 'em for a living, you should have a bankroll of $12,000. That might seem like a lot of money if you are really a winning player, but that is what you will need if you want to be 99% sure that you won't go broke. Since a good player might lose a lot of money IN THE SHORT TERM, it should come as no surprise that a bad player might win a lot of money over that same short term. Even the worst players have occasional runs of very good cards, allowing them to delude themselves into believing that they are skillful players.

Due to the element of chance in poker, many bad players never recognize that they are bad. And due to poker's hidden complexity, even those who acknowlege their weaknesses will not become stong players without diligent study of the game. These two factors explain why poker is incredibly profitable for those who play it well.