[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.