I've been learning to play poker for like 6 months now. No limit Texas Hold'em. Mostly just online, microstakes. But I found a couple of bars in my area and played a couple live games with some old drunks, which was fun.
It's a game that involves both luck and skill, like life. In the short term (say one hand) an inexperienced player can beat an experienced player by getting a good hand. This is in contrast to chess, where an inexperienced player can basically never win. But it's not completely random, over the long term, over thousands of hands played, its obvious who is a great player and who is not. That's where the skill lies, in shifting your average up over the long term.
Sometimes people give advice in real life to "play the hand you're dealt". As incels we have been dealt a shitty hand, obviously. We're likely to lose. But only after playing a while did I realize another parallel with poker. It has to do with structural disadvantages.
In Texas Hold'em you have your own two cards and then there are five shared cards that are laid on the table. The aim is to make the best hand from your two cards combined with the five on the table. The cards on the table are revealed slowly through the game, you don't know what they all are in the beginning. So you don't know whether you should bet or check or fold, until you've seen those cards.
The two players beside the dealer are called the big blind and the small blind, and they have to bet a certain amount of money without knowing what any of the cards on the table are. So they are at a huge structural or positional disadvantage compared to the rest of the players. In this position, it is incredibly hard to win over the long term, and you are basically just minimizing losses. Luckily positions switch around and you wouldn't be the big blind or small blind every time you play.
But this isn't the case in real life. We are in the shitty big blind or small blind position forever. The game is stacked against us forever. We simply can't catch up, can't bet enough without losing it all.
It's meant to be some stoic piece of advice to "play the hand you're dealt", but it leaves out that other very important part of the poker pill.
It's a game that involves both luck and skill, like life. In the short term (say one hand) an inexperienced player can beat an experienced player by getting a good hand. This is in contrast to chess, where an inexperienced player can basically never win. But it's not completely random, over the long term, over thousands of hands played, its obvious who is a great player and who is not. That's where the skill lies, in shifting your average up over the long term.
Sometimes people give advice in real life to "play the hand you're dealt". As incels we have been dealt a shitty hand, obviously. We're likely to lose. But only after playing a while did I realize another parallel with poker. It has to do with structural disadvantages.
In Texas Hold'em you have your own two cards and then there are five shared cards that are laid on the table. The aim is to make the best hand from your two cards combined with the five on the table. The cards on the table are revealed slowly through the game, you don't know what they all are in the beginning. So you don't know whether you should bet or check or fold, until you've seen those cards.
The two players beside the dealer are called the big blind and the small blind, and they have to bet a certain amount of money without knowing what any of the cards on the table are. So they are at a huge structural or positional disadvantage compared to the rest of the players. In this position, it is incredibly hard to win over the long term, and you are basically just minimizing losses. Luckily positions switch around and you wouldn't be the big blind or small blind every time you play.
But this isn't the case in real life. We are in the shitty big blind or small blind position forever. The game is stacked against us forever. We simply can't catch up, can't bet enough without losing it all.
It's meant to be some stoic piece of advice to "play the hand you're dealt", but it leaves out that other very important part of the poker pill.
