First let’s recollect that the DOJ has closed six online poker rooms from a thin field as most operators had already left in 2006, year of inception of anti online gambling law UIGEA. So now only three reputable rooms are left: Bodog Poker, Cake Poker and Carbon Poker. And many pundits fear that these three rooms will be the target of the fourth wave of the crackdown, leaving no place to play online poker in the USA.

In this post we are not trying to answer the question of why this is happening, as this is a long and complicated story where politics, personal ambition and bigotry allied in an unlikely trio reminiscent of the Prohibition of the 20’s. Rather we want to address the naive question of ‘is gambling bad’. In order to answer, the first step is to define gambling. And we are not trying to give a legal answer to that question either, as here again it can get complicated. But just the simple answer like if we were explaining it to a child.

At http://dictionary.reference.com/, there are a total of 7 definitions, and as space is limited, here are the first two:
1. to play at any game of chance for money or other stakes,
2. to stake or risk money, or anything of value, on the outcome of something involving chance.

The point here is that gambling is either playing in a game of chance, or more generally taking a chance in life. All successful businesses as we know them today would not exist if their founders had not taken a chance. If Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg had decided to graduate from Harvard for instance, two of the largest companies in the world, namely Microsoft and Facebook may not exit today. In sports there are times when the team has to take a chance otherwise they are guarantee to lose. Chance and gambling are simply part of life on this earth, because the future is always unknown. There is always a chance for something expected or unexpected to happen.

So why does the Government want so much to shield the people from online poker and online gambling? Because of addictions issues or because of the personal agendas of a few prominent politicians and attorneys?

Yes there are a few people who get addicted playing roulette online. But people also get addicted to their cars and die from it. Same for cigarettes, alcohol, sex (but death from sex is less common and more enjoyable), fatty food (so many deaths related to obesity or diabetics), antidepressants and many more. So mister DOJ, why don’t you let the grownups decide how they want to spend their free time. This would be a nice change.

I generally prefer the single table sit-n-go tourneys. At the lower limits (under $50 buy-in) the players are mostly fish with a lot of gamble in them. This makes for a profitable playing situation for the disciplined player. Most of my income from poker can be attributed to sit-n-go tournaments.

Single table sit-n-go games are the fastest growing games. Many good players are learning that you can win consistently by playing at these games. In fact, quite a number of players are making a living doing exactly that. That’s right – you can actually earn a living playing sit-n-go poker. I’m not there yet, but I am a consistent winner. I believe I probably could earn a living playing sit-n-go poker and I may take the plunge soon. Sometimes I ask myself why I bother working when I could play poker for a living. I tend to be very cautious. I continue to work my real job which affords me a great standard of living. I also play poker daily and enjoy an additional income stream. This is a great place to be!

A typical sit-n-go tournament is a 9 or 10 player table with the final three players making the money. Another type of sit-n-go tourney is the shorthanded game where 5 or 6 players enter and the top 2 players make the money. I personally prefer the shorthanded games. There are satellite sit-n-go tournaments where you buy in for a certain amount of money and then the top finisher wins an entry into a bigger buy-in tournament. There are also step tournaments where players buy in at step 1 for a certain amount and the top finishers advance to step 2 where the buy in is more. There may be 4 or 5 steps before the final tourney where the final prizes are won.

When the sit-n-go begins, each player is given the same amount of tournament chips. These are not real money. They are chips used to try to outlast your opponents in the tournament.  There are some distinct advantages of sit-n-go tournaments over other forms of poker:

Sit-n-go games are very fast: The blinds rise continously until the end of the game. I would point out, however, that there is generally plenty of time to select good starting hands and find your best spots to get your chips in the pot.

There are lots of sit-n-go games available: Most poker sites have sit-n-go tournaments running around the clock. Party Poker has a wide selection of sit-n-go tournaments at various buy in levels.

Your losses are limited: At a cash game you might lose all your money, buy in again and then lose that. At a sit-n-go tournament you can only lose the money you have invested in the buy in. This reduces bankroll variance for sit-n-go players. Cash players and especially large field tournament players generally experience much greater bankroll variances than sit-n-go players.

Proper strategy can lead to consistent wins: Most of the players at lower level sit-n-go games are fish. They love to gamble and they’re looking for a fast win. They may enter many sit-n-go tournaments looking to get lucky and make the money. These weaker players are thrilled to get a lucky draw (to suck out) and make the big score. You can take advantage of these players by playing a proper strategy consistently.

Consider this possibility if you are serious about playing online poker. You buy in at Party Poker for $500.  Then you get their $500 cash bonus. I must confess that I didn’t follow this path. I bought in for $200 at Party Poker, failing to take advantage of their full bonus offer. I played poker for years before I learned of solid sit-n-go strategies. I was already a decent player and I had somehow instinctively gravitated toward the sit-n-go games. After I started learning the new strategies, I discovered that much of my learning through the school of hard knocks was right on the mark. There were also some new concepts that helped move my game to an entirely new level.

With a simple deck of cards, you could improvise a poker game anywhere, whenever the opportunity arose. That was an other feature in which poker had a clear advantage over the games of faro and roulette. Poker adapted admirably well to the itinerant lifestyle of professional players.

A handgun was often part of their luggage. Because of the stigma they were struck with, it was not uncommon for professional poker players to have no alternative but to practice their trade by playing with outlaws, which was not without risk. Faced with such opponents, it was sometimes better to lose in order not to get into trouble and to stay alive.

For legendary players like Johnny Moss, Doyle ‘Texas Dolly’ Brunson and Thomas ‘Amarillo Slim’ Preston, having to separate from their gains of the evening under the threat of a gun was part of the territory.

When they were more lucky like when they met gullible salesmen on the Mississippi River steamboats, they could easily get their hands on their wallets at low risk. The typical trick was to deal them a monster hand like a quad of eights, while another player got a slightly stronger hand like a straight flush. Nowadays we know that statistically the occurrence of such a situation is highly unlikely, but during these times it happened more often than not.

With all cheating still taking place nowadays including online (think about the recent scandal at Lock Poker), one can imagine how profitable it could have been at the time for the skilled players. Recently poker pro José “Girah” Macedo said that he cheated some high stakes players by deceiving them and finding a way to see their hole cards. Yes it is hard to imagine how the game of poker could be totally devoid of any form of cheating, after all deception is part of the game, the question is where to draw the line sometimes.

One question that often arises is if these games are gambling or not. For instance there are professional poker players and sports bettors, but not professional roulette or craps players. So if such pros can survive and pay the bills, they must have a skill that give them a profit every month or at least every year.

As a matter of fact there are pros playing poker, blackjack, sports betting and backgammon. These are the main games where you can find pros, and this seem to indicate that skill is involved.

Talking about backgammon it is considered a game of skill in the popular mind while poker is considered gambling. But in fact these 2 games are very similar as the premisses are random, such as the roll of a dice of the draw of a card from a 52 cards deck, but the skill part comes from the player having to make a decision. Is it not strange that most people would consider backgammon a game of skill close to chess whereas they think poker is mostly a matter of gambling your heart out?

Sometimes there are popular misconceptions and considering poker to be mostly gambling is clearly wrong.

This issue is not as insignificant as it seems as most online gambling law make a difference between games of chance (gambling) and games of skill (non gambling). So it is trivial to realize that roulette is pure gambling. But then how come regulators put poker in the same category as roulette, with all the decision  making in poker? Do this people have a secret agenda?

This blog started on a serious note, so hopefully the following posts will be a bit more fun.