You may already be a winner
I
occasionally enjoy watching poker on TV, since so you can see what is
going on and the game seems so exciting. Especially when nobody ever
seems to actually lose, since even those who lose all their chips first
still get to walk away with a hundred grand or so.
But I don't think it would be a good idea for me to start playing poker online for money. I might win, but then again, I might just as well lose. Somebody has to lose, since poker is a zero-sum game, and I don't see why any important force in the universe would love me enough to make me a winner. I am not that special. Of course, few players imagine themselves as becoming the losers when they start playing. But by simple mathematics, many of them, perhaps even the most, eventually have to lose more than they win. Hopefully they get at least some entertainment out of it.
Of course you can play poker with monopoly money, either in real life or online. I have to wonder, though, whether the sites that offer monopoly money poker employ bots and shill players to lose on purpose, so that the players would get an unrealistically optimistic idea on their skills and move to sites where they play for real. (This is what I would do if I were the proprietor of a monopoly money gambling site.)
Other than what my common sense tells me, I don't really know anything about the world of poker. But my common sense tells me that the whole thing is, in effect, a giant pyramid where each level wins the money from the level under it and loses it to the level above it, and each player eventually rises to the level of their incompetence. And everywhere there is somebody who doesn't actually play but takes his cut in various different ways: as they say, the golddiggers didn't get rich in the gold rush, but the people who sold them the wagons and pans and other supplies. If I am totally wrong here, somebody please correct me in the comments.
Even though the people at the top never play against the masses at the bottom, they still benefit from expanding the bottom since more money flows up, along with the poker industry as a whole. The only question is where to find more suckers to join the bottom level. The tables full of poker books you can find in any major bookstore give one answer. (And what do you know, girls can play too!) I think I got a better answer when I was one day taking a walk through a neighbourhood in which the payday loan industry has a higher-than-average concentration. A door of one of these places was wide open, and when I looked in, their whole inside wall was practically wallpapered with ads of various online poker sites, along with ads for poker training material.
Perhaps the next time when they bring out all those piles of cash out in the TV poker tournament, it would be an interesting exercise to visualize each $100 bill as somebody's tear.
But I don't think it would be a good idea for me to start playing poker online for money. I might win, but then again, I might just as well lose. Somebody has to lose, since poker is a zero-sum game, and I don't see why any important force in the universe would love me enough to make me a winner. I am not that special. Of course, few players imagine themselves as becoming the losers when they start playing. But by simple mathematics, many of them, perhaps even the most, eventually have to lose more than they win. Hopefully they get at least some entertainment out of it.
Of course you can play poker with monopoly money, either in real life or online. I have to wonder, though, whether the sites that offer monopoly money poker employ bots and shill players to lose on purpose, so that the players would get an unrealistically optimistic idea on their skills and move to sites where they play for real. (This is what I would do if I were the proprietor of a monopoly money gambling site.)
Other than what my common sense tells me, I don't really know anything about the world of poker. But my common sense tells me that the whole thing is, in effect, a giant pyramid where each level wins the money from the level under it and loses it to the level above it, and each player eventually rises to the level of their incompetence. And everywhere there is somebody who doesn't actually play but takes his cut in various different ways: as they say, the golddiggers didn't get rich in the gold rush, but the people who sold them the wagons and pans and other supplies. If I am totally wrong here, somebody please correct me in the comments.
Even though the people at the top never play against the masses at the bottom, they still benefit from expanding the bottom since more money flows up, along with the poker industry as a whole. The only question is where to find more suckers to join the bottom level. The tables full of poker books you can find in any major bookstore give one answer. (And what do you know, girls can play too!) I think I got a better answer when I was one day taking a walk through a neighbourhood in which the payday loan industry has a higher-than-average concentration. A door of one of these places was wide open, and when I looked in, their whole inside wall was practically wallpapered with ads of various online poker sites, along with ads for poker training material.
Perhaps the next time when they bring out all those piles of cash out in the TV poker tournament, it would be an interesting exercise to visualize each $100 bill as somebody's tear.
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