In view of the fact that poker has become a widely popular card game, it is easy to see its universal appeal. Just as with soccer or basketball, there is a potentially unlimited lifespan for the game. Online poker serves to keep the game in the public eye, sharpen the understanding of the average punter and encourage the younger generation to take a further look at poker than they might have done if played, say, in college.
The numbers of poker tournaments are also steadily increasing, and with the help of massive networks such as e Books Nuggets provides a handy guide for staking your claim to a title. Various authors provide advice on winning, starting hands, bankroll management and a myriad of other possibilities, rules and concepts.
Many of the probabilities provided at any given moment in poker history have no scientific value at all. The best way to look at a flop is that it can’t possibly hurt your hand, though the odds of your opponent receiving a specific hand and holding it areperhaps infinite.
As Daniel Negreanu puts it in Fermat’s Proposition System:
Forces are invincible.
Small pairs are unbeatable.
Knowing that particular card can’t be beaten and must therefore be strong.
It is impossible to bluff or bluff in.
There are no outs.
The only way to win is over the long-term, consistent wins of a lifetime.
You win when you get lucky, and lose when you get unlucky (raise).
Wiser heads. Better odds. Better hands.
A modest bet on the river works, and a larger one on the turn, both work for the house, everything about the game is relative, no one hand is any better than another.
Your competition is equally determined, willing to go to war at any stake or willing to go to war at any other stake, you are not throwing your money away, and the idea of it is to induce weakness in your opponents.
If you were playing Russian roulette you’d put your money on black, red, odd even. Each time the wheel stops, you have a better chance of guessing right than wrong, if you’d rather change it to double odds, you can. In poker, you can do the same thing.
In both games, you have to depend on luck, but in poker you have greater odds, greater control, and can take the long-term approach, whereas in roulette you are at the mercy of the spin of the wheel, your fellow players, and the house.
Roulette is a much better game than ordinary roulette, not only is there a greater possibility of winning, but it’s a game that allows you to be sentimental, like other card games, and has a certain intrinsic value. In short, it is a good game.
Poker, on the other hand, is more of a business and rivalry game, where money is at stake and take, place, nature, human emotions all enter into the equation. This is not to say that emotional gambling is not involved, only that it has less dimensions than what usual roulette allows.
Games like texas holdem aren’t really roulette games because of the luck factor. They are more like the more common casino games, with one major difference, that we can control. We can call these games roulette games, but not in the way you may think.
In the roulette games available in the usual casino, you play simply by predicting where the ball will finally rest when the wheel is done spinning. You do this by betting on what digit the ball will be. If you’re right, you win, if you’re not, you don’t, and you bet again. The roulette wheel, as well as just about anything else, is not subject to human moderation when it comes to predictability.
These games are, in a way, a game of pure blind luck. We can’t influence where the ball will stop, and we can’t influence which numbers will come up, but we can learn to play the game well, and hope that at least we can play it well. The more we learn and the more we practice, the more proficient we will become.
When playing, we need to be extremely sensible, and not take undue risks. Play only after you have assured yourself that you can afford to lose it, and have a clear plan of how to win, or lose, and no other people.
And if you are not very good, and you feel that you can beat the game, you should em ploy to bet, as others are keen to have you participate, others are willing to pay to have you join, and you can cash in on betting for nothing.
But you should em ploy to bet only if you can afford to lose it. Do not bet with money that you need.