[ILIKEPONIES]

In the long run, poker is a skill game. It's played against random opponents, not the house. As such, the cards aren't "stacked against you." To bucket it with all gambling games, especially the lottery, demonstrates a lack of understanding.

[jib]

Poker (in any casino) is raked in some way, either by seat fee or by pot rake, so the game is stacked against you.

You can certainly overcome that edge by being more skilled than your opponents (which is a nice difference from most other casino games), but over the entire population of poker players, playing poker is a losing proposition.

In the eyes of a casino, there is no difference in running a poker game or any other game (except possibly that poker is a pretty expensive game to run, compared to how much you can rake without it being obvious that the rake is significant, as it has fairly slow rounds and few participants per staff needed to run it).

[ryandrake]

That's like saying the movie theater is stacked against you because they charge admission to get in.

There is a huge difference between playing a game against the house which is mathematically set up to lose you money in the long term, vs. paying an entrance fee to compete against other players.

[learnstats2]

I disagree that it demonstrates a lack of understanding:

- In poker, the house takes a cut that typically overwhelms the benefit of being a skilled player. An unskilled player is losing to the house and their competitors.

- An unskilled player may not be playing against random opponents. Part of the skill you are talking about is the skill of picking vulnerable opponents and milking them.

- Gambler's ruin still takes effect: you have a finite bankroll so you can only ride out a finite amount of bad luck before you're bankrupt. Fine, if you're rich or the house.

- Many of the best poker players in the world have bankrupted or have had to take deep loans to continue playing.

[jawngee]

    In poker, the house takes a cut that typically 
    overwhelms the benefit of being a skilled player. 
    An unskilled player is losing to the house and 
    their competitors.

Unless you are playing at an underground game with an insane rake, most established casinos (all of them in the US) have a beatable rake.

Most online game rakes are beatable, plus you get rake back offers, etc.

   Gambler's ruin still takes effect: you have a finite 
   bankroll so you can only ride out a finite amount of 
   bad luck before you're bankrupt. Fine, if you're rich 
   or the house.

Bankroll management is part of being a skilled player. If you are playing with a roll suitable for the level you are playing at, 20 buy-ins usually, and still meet ruin then you aren't beating variance then you are a bad player, not just having bad luck.

   Many of the best poker players in the world have bankrupted 
   or have had to take deep loans to continue playing.

Most pro poker players are degenerate gamblers who play other games or do sports betting or lose big on prop bets, etc.

Now contrast these points against games like blackjack (which make the casinos way more money than the poker room does) and it's not even remotely the same thing.

I survived for two years playing live poker and I used to be a partner in an underground club in Manhattan. Our rake was inline with what AC offered.

[mod]

Most of your comment was on-point, but you're incorrect here:

> Bankroll management is part of being a skilled player. If you are playing with a roll suitable for the level you are playing at, 20 buy-ins usually, and still meet ruin then you aren't beating variance then you are a bad player, not just having bad luck.

There's a strong suvivorship bias present here. Most poker pros never busted their 20-roll buy-in--that's probably true. Plenty of very good players had some very bad luck and busted a 20 buy-in 'roll.

Some very smart professionals--leatherass, for instance--recommend 100 buy-in bankrolls.

Even then, if you play long enough (as in many lifetimes in aggregate), you will eventually go bust. So certainly it's happend that otherwise qualified players have blown through 100 buyin 'rolls due in large part to variance.

[rubiquity]

> - Many of the best poker players in the world have bankrupted or have had to take deep loans to continue playing.'

That's because it turned out that those players weren't actually the best players in the world. Poker saw a huge birth of statistical analysis from 2002-2008 when Online Poker was legal/legal enough in the US. People who only played live (in person at a casino) their entire career might only play 50k-200k hands. When online poker came about you could play 200k hands in a month. It turns out these so called "best in the world players" were just on a really good run. It also turns out it takes millions upon millions of hands to really find out if you're truly a winner or just benefitting from the good side of variance.

This affect gets even worse because the so-called "Best players in the world" were MTT players and MTTs have the highest statistical variance of all. I have friends who are still poker pros. Next to Asian businessman, the only other player they would rather have at their tables are "Television Pros."

[ILIKEPONIES]

+1 for rubiquity's response.

People don't go broke in poker because the rake is too high. They go broke, by and large, because they aren't good enough to beat their opponents. It's still a skill game in the long run.

A lot of poker players (even some great players) move up stakes too quickly. In other words, they play above their bankroll.

Many poker players also have 'off the felt' problems like, ironically enough, losses accrued from gambling on blackjack, craps, etc.

[giltleaf]

What is an MTT player?

[rubiquity]

Multi-table Tournaments. World Series of Poker, World Poker Tour, etc.

[mod]

The difference is in whether poker is a game of skill or not. You can't lose the lottery on purpose--no skill involved.

The best players win all the money. Both skilled and unskilled players realize that.