Word: pokerful
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...best thing to gambling and winning, is gambling and losing—and that bodes well for professionals. Forget skill and luck—all you have to make sure is that you’re better than the next guy, and the multitudes that have flocked to online poker in recent years have ensured that there is a consistent crop of bad players. One of Ian’s friends said he liked gambling because he is “surrounded by inept people, yet none of them are his boss, and if they do something dumb, it makes...
During the times he is not actively playing poker, Ian examines statistical records of his hands online to gauge which hands are leaking money and where he’s going wrong. He keeps tabs on other players for play tendencies to qualify his future decisions with that information. For all the conceptions of poker as a sport of luck, most professionals emphasize the importance of decision-making in the game. “Do I fold, do I raise, or do I call? Whoever makes better decisions wins over the long run,” Darkhawk says...
Hawrilenko, who now lives in Back Bay, describes his overarching perspective on poker as a “game tree.” Every time he or one of his poker friends chooses an action—whether to raise, fold, or call—he’s taking a different branch of the tree, which is composed of all the possible moves and all the possible ends. As you move up the tree, it narrows down to what is called your distribution, or the hands you can possibly hold. Professionals, Hawrilenko says, try to maximize the value...
...guarantee of the outcome. The description sounds a lot like poker—every hand has a good or bad outcome. It’s the mere possibility of the former, coupled with the ease with which it can happen, that draws legions to the game. But many experienced poker players chafe at the use of the term “gambling,” wincing as soon it’s mentioned and politely interrupting to clarify the distinction between gambling and card playing—well, at least their form of play...
...don’t think poker is gambling,” Darkhawk says. “Everything I’m doing, I know and have calculated—not completely, exactly. But over the long run, I’m going to make money.” A skilled poker player will have reduced his risk until he is confident of the results of his game, according to Darkhawk. With all its connotations of irrational risk-taking and unpredictable outcomes, gambling is no longer an applicable term when the game of poker has a firm foundation in analytics...