Comment Drawing from a very finite resource (Score 1) 347
I think what a lot of people don't realize is the monetary effect of playing in a game where the house takes a portion of the cut (known as "the rake" in poker).
In poker, everytime someone wins the hand and collects the pot, the house takes their share of the rake from the pot and the winner often doesn't even notice, since they are now a pile of chips richer. However, when you start putting the numbers together of the average pot, number of hands per game and average buy-in per player, you realize something rather disconcerning: the house rake busts one person at the table per hour. Over a ten hour span, this means that the entire table should theoretically be busted out.
What happens of course, is that the skilled players usually walk away with a fraction of the non-skilled player and the house cleans up the rest by virtue of being there. The downfall is thus that the non-skilled players (aka "suckers") will and eventually do get tired of putting money back into a system where they constantly lose.
The truth is that poker is a recreational pasttime not unlike most other there, such as video games. And like video games, there are those players who are hardcore and live to play (this becomes literal in poker) and those who play for fun. Some people just don't have the effort, time or I dare say, the mental capacity to excel in competetive games. But unlike counter-strike, where you can still have fun being mediocre, you lose money when you're mediocre in poker.
Two cents from a winning poker player of many years, anyways.
In poker, everytime someone wins the hand and collects the pot, the house takes their share of the rake from the pot and the winner often doesn't even notice, since they are now a pile of chips richer. However, when you start putting the numbers together of the average pot, number of hands per game and average buy-in per player, you realize something rather disconcerning: the house rake busts one person at the table per hour. Over a ten hour span, this means that the entire table should theoretically be busted out.
What happens of course, is that the skilled players usually walk away with a fraction of the non-skilled player and the house cleans up the rest by virtue of being there. The downfall is thus that the non-skilled players (aka "suckers") will and eventually do get tired of putting money back into a system where they constantly lose.
The truth is that poker is a recreational pasttime not unlike most other there, such as video games. And like video games, there are those players who are hardcore and live to play (this becomes literal in poker) and those who play for fun. Some people just don't have the effort, time or I dare say, the mental capacity to excel in competetive games. But unlike counter-strike, where you can still have fun being mediocre, you lose money when you're mediocre in poker.
Two cents from a winning poker player of many years, anyways.
