What is poker all about?

Someone else tried to convince me Poker is all about protecting your blind and stealing other peoples blinds.

I tried to convince him that that thought is too short term, and you need to save your blinds effectively so you can play bigger pots and profit with decent hands rather then steal others continuously to stay alive.

My view on poker is that it's all about winning the last hand in the tournament... As long as I win the last hand in the tournament I will feel like I completed what I tried to accomplish from the beginning.

What are your thoughts?
What do you think poker is all about?

poker is a lot about luck...i think...not stealing blinds...you can't live in a tournament by only stealing blind...you need to play...you must have good cards in your hand and down on the table...and for that you need LUCK!

WRONG!

Poker is about manipulating luck. Dodging luck, attacking luck, getting lucky, and avoiding somebody else's luck.
You can fool Lady Luck. Skills are graded in how well you can manipulate the bitch.

LMAO Now that's a ****ing answer

Poker is discipline. If you don't have the discipline to keep your head in the game, you are just trying to steal blinds, or depending on luck to win tournaments, I wonder how far you are actually getting.

Yes stealing blinds and luck are part of the game, but if you don't have the discipline to lay down hands, be patient for the cards that you are willing to play in various positions, and can't bluff, you aren't going to get very far. (Yes there are many other components, but I picked three

Don't know who said it, but we have all probably heard that NLH takes minutes to learn and a life time to master. That is not going to happen focusing on one aspect of the game.
Cheers

Lol i think I'll go with Ursala on this one.

dj's answer was also amazing too lol. But it truly is discipline in the long run.

Poker is about getting AA, KK or QQ and hoping nobody has a low pocket pair and gets trips

Poker is such a huge mess of ideas, skills, and of course luck, that it's hard to say. At the end of the day though, it's about making the right decisions and getting your money in good. Of course it doesn't hurt to have a sprinkling of luck

Thats actually a very good way to think about it. It gives you motivation... and keeps your mind off of trying to get more and more chips. The reason i said that last bit was because its actually not good to keep thinking about getting your chip stack higher. It makes you think irrationally and play hands you usually wouldnt play just because you want to move and try to make a stack for yourself. By not thinking of in that way, you could focus more on what you should do and not on what you want to do... My thoughts on what poker is about are almost the same as yours anyways.

dj hit it I think. And if not at least it was the most entertaining answer.

I think poker is just like life. You get delt a certain hand. Its up to you what you do with it. If you make good choices you have a better chance of good things happening. But then again you can make all the right decisions and still get screwed, or vise versa.

I think matt damon quoted it best in rounders where he described what poker was all about.
He said something to the affect that the goal was to win one big pot an hour,and to protect your blinds when you dont have it.
something like that.

Poker to me is about the win........smiling ,a game of chance, gambling trying to out play and out think the others at table , being able to read them and not be read at the same time...and a whole lot of luck.......Tina

I think it was a veteran female poker player who said this (anne something) and sorry if I'm butchering her quote.

"Poker is about making the right decisions and making the most for your opponent's bad decisions."

That's my fav line I can think of off my head.

Poker to me is about enjoying myself not necessarily winning big but I love playing the game and I think we get better hopefully the more we play but to some its their job and they need to profit from it.

Poker is about BALLS...big hairy cajones!! Of course I speak only for me, as a man! No offense ladies, I hope!!
Peace,
FLOW
PS. And most importantly..WINNING!!!!

I think poker is about patience,discipline and timing.However it is possibly one of the most frustrating things on this planet,next to women.I think at the end of playing I just ask that I put my money in with the best hand and let the cards fall where they may.Other than that there is not much we can do.

ursula has the most correct answer...but dj11's is the best!!

Perfect! In my first CC game that I finished ITM that is the sense I got.

Keep your head, be disciplined, play smart (tight aggressive but mix it up) and wait for THE HAND once an hour. That's how I got to the final table this time, of course when you win you're really smart right? lol

i'll put it as simple as i can

poker is about winning money

period

Umm, these are all very good post, and I would have to agree with dj because good poker players are always at war with luck, but actually poker is all about math, logic of poker, and IMO most importantly winning money. Most people like to think of it as a card game, but it's actially a game of wagering based on imperfect information that uses cards to construct the situations for wagering. Players make bets and call bets based on their estimate that their hand, (which they see), in the end, will be better than their opponents hand (which they can't see). To make an informed estimate, they have to take four factos into account:
1. The likelihood that that their hand will improve as more cards are dealt, which is pretty much a straight mathmatical exercise.
2.An estimate of the hand their opponent may hold, which is an exercise in inductive reasoning, based on hands he has held in the past, his general style of play, and the bets he has made thus so far.
3. the likehood their opponents hand will improve, another mathmatical exercise, but complicated by the fact that their opponent hand is not known for sure.
4. The money odds being offered by the pot.

--or you could simply look of it as a game of bluffing and betting to win money, lol--


**Another important point to add** How well you do in poker is determined by how many mistakes you make, and how many mistakes your opponent makes. The goal of all forms of poker is to avoid making mistakes while inducing as many mistakes as possible from your opponents. Every time you make a mistake you loose, and your opponents gain. Every time you induce a mistake from your opponent, you gain and they loose. These gains and losses don't occur immediately. You may make a bad mistake, and still win a hand, and pull more chips into your stack. But in the very long run your results at the poker table will approach the sum of all your mistakes less the sum of your opponents mistakes. This principal governs all games which are mixtures of skill and chance.


luckytokenz

--As long as we are lucky we attribute it to our smartness; our bad luck we give the gods credit for.--
Josh Billings

I actually just finished reading Casino Royale and as James Bond says, "It's not about the short-term. The point is to get to the end while keeping your dignity. Win or Lose."

Poker in a home game or bar game is really just a reason to be social. In a casino it is about winning or losing, testing your range of skill, with money only away to keep score.

poker is a game of people played with cards.

You guys are way off!

You put your right foot in. You put your right foot out. You put your right foot in, and you shake it all about.
That's what it's all about.

Oh good job you just knocked my beer off the table with your foot. Now we got wet chips. Get your foot outta the pot will ya!

I think Kenny Rogers summed it up pretty well:

Quote:

You got to know when to hold em, know when to fold em, Know when to walk away and know when to run. You never count your money when youre sittin at the table. Therell be time enough for countin when the dealins done.

He was half right. How many hands would you play if there were no blinds?

Poker is about hard work. Constantly watching, observing, manipulating, thinking, strategy, patience, perservereance, etc;

IMO, dj is has a short and sweet correct answer.

It takes hard work to become successful at poker. Stealing blinds is a good tactic, it's not everything.

Making good reads, the tough folds, the tough calls, the right bets in the right places against the right opp. Inducing more mistakes from your opps than you do yourself. Luck is only short term, the hard work and right decisions will bring long term profits.

Fundamental Theorem of Poker stuff right there. That's what it's all about.

Poker is about making correct decisions and making your opponents make incorrect decisions.

$.

If you're late in a tournament, poker is ALL about stealing blinds. Once the blinds get huge it seems like you can go 10-15 hands without even seeing a flop, sometimes more. But if you're playing cash games or something...defending your blind can be a wrong decision. If you call pre-flop from the blinds you're going to end up playing your whole hand out of position.

Oh and in cash games I would say it is not very profitable to just try to win the blinds. And by not very profitable I mean you will lose money if thats all you try to do is blind-steal....

Poker, like life, is about making those choices which maximize your expected value.

Poker is a mental chess game. You can't always have the best hand, the best luck, or even better skills than everyone at the table. You have to put fear aside and shove your chips in sometimes. But mostly I think it's about learning not to pull your hair out after a bad beat.

I think this sums it up.

When I first read that I just couldn't get my head around it. I couldn't understannd what Sklansky was saying. Of course I would win if I could see my opponents cards!!!

The skill of poker is not telepathy, its correctly narrowing your opponents range and getting it right more times than its wrong, and then making decisions based of that infomation.

Experts get it wrong all of the time.. but they get it right more often than most... that is the skill.