No words can express how confused I am to get so sucked into a game like Poker; a year ago, I hadn’t touched it, let alone thought about playing it because I’d heard how “addicting” it was and was deliberately avoiding it. My friends had a poker night one night, though, and I was curious. One game turned into seven and suddenly I’m returning to my room at 4 am. We just had another one last night, and I used it to record this critical play.
Poker mainly puts people at risk for addiction because it is a game of chance. Games of chance are partially based in calculation and precision and because of that, people are addicted to the feeling that they have a chance outside skill and luck, though those are still important factors. Based on the reading, as I interpreted it, this is the disenchantment that hooks many people to these games.
In a game like Poker, there are many ways players can rationalize and calculate their odds. Because of this, this invites players to believe that they have more control of the game which is always addicting and satisfying. In addition, they can scrutinize other player’s subtle and subconscious reactions to help them make final decisions. One aspect of Poker that I’m fascinated with is the action and choice to fold your hand before the community cards are dealt. One player, who was really good at the game, was able to save himself multiple times using this action and I was wondering how he could predict that his hand would not do well in certain rounds. And how he could completely excel in other rounds. It seemed that to him, it was all calculation and observation.
When I had one of these successes myself, it was such a satisfying experience. It was like I was using a sixth sense to detect and predict my fate with my hand. The more I played, I grew better at gauging how to make these predictions and only striked when it was more probabilistically optimal for me. This was a facet of the game that made it so thrilling and addictive to me. I feel this might have been a big reason for my group to also keep asking for “another round”.
Poker also offers a lot of randomness. While it does heavily rely on probabilities from counting, luck is still a factor in the game. Being able to predict what cards are in other people’s hands will never be something that is always accurate. In games with pro players, or games where money is on the line, players are harder to read, having already perfected their “poker faces”. They can also bluff with several actions that you cannot predict sometimes. This randomness, though, is unwanted. It adds wonder in these card games of chance that makes the game fun and addicting for people.
“Unlike card games players around the table, the rules and odds of which are transparent, the inner mechanisms and odds of gambling machines have always been concealed in a box.” This highlights how Poker is different from, for example, a slot machine, despite both relying on calculations and probabilities. In this way, a slot machine and any other concealed gambling device holds more mystery and wonder than Poker. In Poker, you can see how cards are dealt, who the big and small blinds are, and any subtle tells from the faces around the table. It’s all there for you to parse through to help you devise your odds. But a gambling machine would hide all this and you are left at the mercy of a mechanism that you cannot analyze and very often is scammed by.
