Poker Is Not Gambling Part I

Poker Is Not Gambling Part I

The entire history of the United States, particularly the Western lore, were all about gambling, and in particular all about poker. Even though for many years playing poker was not considered something that nice people would want to do, the fact remains that many presidents of the United States going back to the Revolutionary war, and soon thereafter, and for all the years since, all played poker.

Poker played well is not a gamble, but a game of skill and knowledge. Although there is a significant element of luck, such is present in all aspects of human life, and not relegated only to poker.

Success in business, or the success in your job, or your career, or whatever it is that is your primary endeavor and the source of income, is always, and has always been, a combination of knowledge and skill. The more knowledge you have, the better equipped you are to be successful. The better your skills in transferring that knowledge into action, the equally better your chances of success. In all these endeavors, luck will always be present, both good and bad.

Sometimes no matter how knowledgeable or how skilled you are, bad luck will simply happen to you and you have to learn how to overcome it. Doing that is also part of your knowledge and your skills, and how well you do it also directly determines your success. On the other side of the coin, equally so good luck will also visit you many times during your life, no matter what your endeavor might be. So it is for poker, where there will be many times during your poker playing career where it will appear that you can do no wrong. Those will be the great and wonderful times, because everything that you do will always work out your advantage, all hands you play will always be winners, and all your draws will come to be and win you the pot. And so it is also in life. Poker is a microcosm of life, and it equally reflects all that is good and bad in human nature.

Not all people in the world are good and not all poker players will be nice people. Not all people in the world will be equally successful, and not all poker player will be equally as profitable as others.

How well you handle your life will be reflected in how well you handle your poker playing success. If you have learned how to discipline yourself in life, you will not have trouble disciplining yourself in the play of poker. If, on the other hand, you don't know what personal discipline is, then you will have lots of trouble in poker no matter how much you learn. Learning the theory of poker, or the theory of games, is alone not enough. In fact, learning the theory of anything is alone not enough. In order for the theory to have any practical meaning, it has to have what is called "practical application". This practical application is the skill by which a human person is able to transcend the theory into the actual doing of it, commonly called "putting the theory into practice". In my books I have often called this "the workability principle".

What this simply means is the ability to be able to take the knowledge and actually apply it to realworld situations successfully.

Many people have the ability to be able to apply knowledge into realworld situations, but very few of them have the ability to be able to do it successfully on a consistent basis. Being a consistently successful and profitable poker player is very difficult, and you should have no illusions about it. Yes, there will be times when you begin to play poker and you will get enormously lucky, something that is very often called "beginners luck". This happens with startling regularity, and I have witnessed this amongst novice players many, many times.

But such luck is fleeting, and if you do not learn to tampered it with knowledge and skill, your overall endresult experience is bound to be unlucky.

The world of card rooms and casino poker rooms is full of graveyards of the hopeful who came equipped with a little knowledge, a little skill, a lot of hope, and a great deal of beginners luck, only to discover that such luck is fickle, and that a little knowledge and little skill is not enough, and is in fact very dangerous. Such players very often experience enormous highs as they glory in their initial success, and quite as often erroneously attribute their initial success to a misperceived sense of their own skills and abilities, as well as their own sense of greatness and invincibility.

Such are signs of early danger, and if the player does not understand them he or she is heading for an inevitable disaster. In fact, any poker player who allows himself or herself to experience such great highs opens himself or herself up to equally deep lows.

We will continue with this discussion in the next issue.

Victor H. Royer is the author of 22 books on casino gaming. His newest series of 13 books - including the new release Powerful Profits from Poker - are now available in all major book stores, or from The Gambler's Book Shop at 1-800-522- 1777, or at Amazon.com.

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