[vintermann]

Look down on? I think gambling is harmful. That's quite independent on whether I "look down on" it or not.

I do suspect that poker can't be as inherently fun as most other card and board games of chance and skill, because if it was it shouldn't need high stakes to be exciting. But that's just a suspicion.

I have a philosophy of life, that I'd like to explain. Picture there's an immigrant. He comes from some far-off country with a very different culture. He didn't move by choice, he doesn't much like the culture of the county he came to. He'd like to protect his culture and raise his kids in it. He doesn't let them mingle, or get too involved in the culture around them. Naturally, he fails. Looking back on it as an old man, he realises that his kids have adopted not only the worst attributes of the surrounding culture, but they have kept the least sympathetic sides of the old culture, his culture too. And they're repeating his mistakes. "I should have let go", he laments. "I should have picked the things that actually matter, and asked them to hold on to just those, rather than trying to keep everything the way I was used to."

I've told it as a story about immigration, because then it's quite easy to believe, right? But truth is, even if we never move to another country, we move to the future. Culture changes. We are that immigrant dad. We too, if we just try to hold on to what we're familiar with, will lose. We need to make conscious choices about what really matters, what's worth holding onto, and what we can let go. If we just coast along without thinking, we'll keep bad traditions and make new bad traditions too.

Gambling culture is one of those things I want to let go. Become a thing of the past. Recycled into something better. I do love modern board and card games, which manage to be fun without high stakes, smoky rooms and martinis. It's not that I don't understand the glamourous appeal of of all that, I am your "countryman" in that regard. It's just not what I want to save.

[jjxw]

The vast majority of people who play poker do not play it for the "high stakes, smoky rooms, and martinis". Speaking for myself, I regularly play for very low stakes with friends in my own place of residence and we enjoy it as both as an intellectual pursuit and something to socialize over.

Obviously your viewpoint is perfectly valid - there are plenty of people who have been irreparably harmed by gambling culture and the way that poker is marketed largely does itself no favors in that regard. My point is that degenerate culture and poker can be separated and there are absolutely healthy ways to enjoy a hobby which, yes, has a luck element to it, but also requires precise study and meticulous decision making to excel at.

From what I've read I think you are conflating the predatory nature of casinos with the game of poker. Those two things are certainly linked, but I would argue that it would be a mistake to write off a game like No Limit Texas Hold'em as irredeemably harmful due to the association.

[vintermann]

Are you sure about that? If it was just for the intellectual pursuit and socialization, why are you playing poker and not, say, Catan?

Obviously not everyone plays poker in a smoky room with gangsters, or even with real money, but I think maybe that cultural context is part of the explanation. You absolutely can divorce it from that cultural context, if you like poker but hate gambling - but is that worth holding onto, when there are so many options to get similar intellectual and social pleasures?

[jjxw]

Why does anyone choose to play any game instead of another? Catan has a chance element to it, isn't that gambling to try to win the game? Why not play something completely deterministic? For the record, we also do play Catan and other games.

We play poker because we enjoy the structure of the game and it is different to other things. Personally I'm uncomfortable with your insinuation that I, and the friends I play with, are somehow culturally brainwashed to be gamblers because we enjoy poker.

I'll end the conversation by repeating what I said above. If you look down on this type of activity then there's nothing I can do to change your mind.

[vintermann]

> Why does anyone choose to play any game instead of another?

Because of culture. But culture changes all the time - if we resist changing it, it gets changed for us, and then usually in ways we would least like.

> isn't that gambling to try to win the game

No, of course not. When I say gambling I'm talking about out-of-game stakes. There's obviously a difference between real-world money and in-game stakes like victory points.

You're not brainwashed more than anyone is. Catan and poker are both part of our culture. But we lose culture all the time, whether we want to or not (the point of my story), so is it really worth it to hold on to the culture that is heavily about gambling?

As I also said: even though lots of poker buffs will resist that because they are into the gambling, you can divorce it from gambling for yourself and your game buddies if you're really determined to. It's your choice. But is that really a conscious choice, or are you just trying to hold on to it without thinking critically about why, like the immigrant dad in my story?

[sneak]

Poker has taught me so many things about life that I probably never would have learned otherwise. Yes, it’s gambling and there is a random element, but it’s a strategy game played in the currency of the world in which it is set. This has wide philosophical implications far beyond the poker table.

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Put it on my tombstone: “he got it in good”.