Is poker gambling?
Poker is a game which has plenty of variants such as Texas Hold ‘em, Seven Card Stun, Stun8, and many others. However, answering to the question “Is poker gambling?” it is not needed to look at the rules of all these kinds of poker as their essence is always the same- risking money in a game in which you may lose or win.
The key to the answer of the question is partly hidden in the word “gambling”. We need to give a definition of the word which is 100% accurate so as to be able to answer. Well, according to the dictionary “gambling” is an activity in which you risk a certain amount of money and your aim is to win more money but at the same time you could lose the money you pledged. It sounds a little bit confusing, doesn’t it?
Let’s go deeper into the poker game. When you play poker, you always risk money and count on your luck. But does everything depend on your luck? No, definitely not! If it did, there would not be so many poker competitions and so much money would not be given to the winners. There are so many strategies and stuff about poker, there even books based on techniques and methods which increase you chance of getting the “higher hand”.
Of course, it would be ridiculous if we claimed that the poker game is based only on the knowledge and the experience of the players such as the chess for example. The reason we do not do that is that it depends on your luck and fate how good cards which are going to be drawn. Therefore, the players do not start their game at equal conditions as it is in the chess, in addition to the comparison.
All these examples and explanations serve to show just one thing and it is that nothing is 100% certain when you play poker. And counting just on your experience and books you had read is just ridiculous. Let’s take another example. What would a professional player do if he drew some very poor cards and the other player who is an amateur drew the four aces? Who would the winner be? The professional player who won hundreds of competitions or the amateur who played poker a couple of times before but it was his lucky day today? The answer of the question is obvious and it serves to prove that you can always lose in poker no matter how good you are or how weak the other player is!
And now let’s go back to the definition of “gambling”- an activity in which you can lose money. It was indisputably proved that one can never be sure in his winning therefore there is always a chance this one loses his or her money. There is nothing left to say except that the poker is 100% gambling and although you need knowledge to play it, it guarantees nothing! The poker players should not get offended when called gamblers as they really are and all facts show it.
