Poker is gambling

You often here self righteous poker players say that poker is not gambling because it is a skill game.  They are wrong.  Gambling is anything where you are wagering money on something in which the outcome is not certain.  The best poker players in the world, even when playing a table full of fish are gambling.  I gambled with a fish on Memorial Day and I lost big time.

There is a player that I have been playing with for a while at my local poker club who is a below average player.  I wouldn't call him a terrible player.  When the deck hits him he maximizes his wins pretty well.  But what helps him when he is winning is what crushes him when he loses.  He just can't take his foot off the gas pedal.  He can't fold when he has anything.

In the past few weeks he has been holding over me and I have been patiently waiting for him to step into the trap I like to call The Nuts.  Yesterday he was winning and had a big stack.  I had about $210 in front of me when he raised it to $12.  I was on the button and peeked down at KK.  I made it $60 to go.  This is a pretty large raise, but I was playing the man.  He was not folding a lot of his hands here so I wanted to create a big pot with him when I had him crushed, as I assumed that I did now.  Sure enough he called and we saw a flop.  The door card was a King to reveal a K 5 10 flop.  He decided to lead out for $50.  I had $160 remaining.  I decided to just call and try to get the money in on the turn.  I really didn't want to blow him off the hand if he had something like a A 10 or J 10.  By calling the pot would probably be big enough for him that he couldn't justify a fold to himself on the turn or river if he put one more dollar in the pot.  And don't say "You should protect your hand here."  You don't protect your hand in cash games.  That is a ridiculous fallacy.  You either bluff or you bet for value.  The only point where I want to protect a strong hand by blowing everyone out is  in a tournament setting.  In cash games, when you can rebuy and you are playing one long game that lasts years, you always want action when you have a strong hand (there are very few exceptions which are more related to bankroll management and meta game but they are the extreme exception).  If you don't want action when you have the nuts you don't have the stomach for cash game poker.  Anyone who tells you differently is wrong.  I called and an Ace peeled off giving a K 10 5 A board.  He checked and I put my last $110 in the pot.  He called and showed AK.  Wow, what a cooler.  Maybe I used up all my bad cooler repellant the past 30 sessions or so because an Ace hit the river.  That one stung.  Especially against this guy who I had been waiting to get heads up and trap him when he overplayed a hand.  As frustrating as it was I did not scream out or sulk or get too upset.  I was more in shock than angry.  But there was nothing I could do.  Like I said, I never want him out of the hand anyway (after he hit the Ace on the turn I was still 96% to win the pot!!!) and the hands pretty much played themselves.  If the hands were reversed, we get it all in also.

This hand shows one important thing.  Poker is gambling.  Even though I was a 98% favorite on the flop and a 96% favorite on the turn, it was a gamble.  I was at risk and I lost. He was forced to put his money in as a 98-2 dog and he didn't even play the hand poorly.  You can argue that he should have folded preflop--and maybe he should have against a tight player out of position--but you also can't say that he played this hand bad.  This hand came down to the luck of the cards.  We gambled for $420.

I ended up losing two buy ins ($400) for my biggest loss in six weeks and went home and called it a night.  I don't feel bad about the way I played, it was just time to pay some bills.  In any business there is expenses and overhead.  For a professional poker player or an advantage gambler that is what bad beats and bad luck are.  They are the cost of doing business.  Without them you could never profit in the long run.  Tonight after a movie I will be back in business at my poker room. Hopefully no more bills come due this week!

Disciplined Degenerate