I played No Limit Texas Hold’Em in person with my roommate and some friends (who also like poker). Being transparent, we play poker a decent amount, so I made sure to try and think a little more critically as I played, looking for things I might not usually notice. No Limit Texas Hold-Em, like many card games, doesn’t have a definitive creator nor target audience, but I think that its rise to fame (and popularity as the go-to poker variant) can be explained by the popularization of the 52 playing card deck and the game’s (relatively) simple rules yet simultaneously deepness of strategy/play. In this critical play, I suggest that poker is a game both of skill and luck, and because of this duality, it is made both more satisfying but also more addicting than other forms of gambling. Personally, poker is a game that I really love because of all the numbers and math. It isn’t really the betting or winning of money that interests me, rather the statistics, game theory, and bluffing that goes into it. It is for this reason which I believe makes poker addictions so dangerous to some players. Because there is so much knowledge and “skill” in the game, it can be easy to believe that if someone is losing money, the solution isn’t to “stop playing,” it’s to “get better.”
Additionally, unlike other games like roulette and blackjack, to participate is an active choice and isn’t constant. If you are in a poker hand with several other players, and you fold your hand, you essentially are doing nothing until the other players finish the round. There is a very clear “in” versus “out” dynamic at play, and it can be extremely boring and frustrating to fold, especially when you’ve been doing it a lot.
This is a hand that I objectively shouldn’t be playing, but because I was getting dealt other bad hands back to back, I got tired/bored, and decided to increase my playing range.
I folded my hand pre-flop (basically the earliest point that I could), and two players were going back and forth pretty slowly, one of them taking a few minutes (relatively long time) to make their choice.
As for the mechanic of randomness, in poker, similar to a game like blackjack, a fun part is that you can go into the game knowing nothing, make objectively bad decisions, and still be rewarded for them. Granted, in the long run, you will lose by the law of large numbers, but there is still that created dynamic where, in the short term, you can still succeed. Poker though is special though in that you are not only playing the ‘numbers’ but also playing the ‘player’ — a very clear form of the challenge aesthetic (as well as, for that matter, the sensation aesthetic generated from the satisfying feel of the cards and ruffling of the chips). These are features which are inherently baked into the game and make it what it is. Poker without its randomness is not poker.
If you truly know your opponent (or if you think you do, for that matter), you can ignore what you have in front of you and really try to get into their heads. This is another reason which makes the game addicting. It is zero-sum; to win money, you must outwit your opponent (and/or get lucky against them). Ultimately though, poker is a game of balance. All of its features are necessary to make the game fun (e.g. the blinds are necessary to ensure players can’t fold every hand except for the very best one, positions are there to ensure that there is equality in who acts first/second, so on, the community cards are there to draw out a round and create variance, etc.).
Personally, I think that poker is a perfectly fine and reasonable game, the problem though is just when people forget that it is inevitably and indisputably a form of gambling. To ignore this fact, I believe is a slippery slope to not take the proper precautions to ensure that things get out of hand, like making sure to set one’s loss limits, stopping when you’re overly flustered/emotional, and so on. I think poker is a bit unique here in that the game itself, in its typical analog form, particularly when played in home games, obviously can’t prevent users from making bad life/financial decisions, but from my knowledge, a lot of online betting sites and (in real life casinos, for that matter) don’t set these barriers for their players. As their final goal as a company is inevitably profit, and they get money by taking rakes from hands, they unfortunately don’t really have an incentive to look out for their players. Friedman in The New Yorker article quite blatantly describes how making it as hard as possible to leave, sucking players in immediately, etc. are the priority — the casinos want money. On the grander scheme of games though, I think chance, randomness, probability, etc. is perfectly fine, so long as it is done in a transparent and non-exploitative way. I think in the case of a game (e.g. one we might make for P2), the chances/randomness should feel fair. Unless the whole intention of the game is to be unfair and annoying (which realistically creates a pretty 1-D game), the player shouldn’t feel like all their progress is getting reset over something out of their control. The randomness should create tension and/or some new dynamics rather than annoyance.
Poker is a very fun game which not only serves as a game of statistics and probability, but also one of wits and people-reading. Still, it is these very reasons which make feel so “master-able” and “attainable,” and thus as a form of gambling, it must be played responsibly.
