All Gamblers Please Respond

Hello. I am a college student writing a research paper and I desperately need some participation from YOU guys. I'd love to know your thoughts on gambling laws in your area and wherever else concerns you; how much money you spend on online games, how gambling has benefited or hindered you, and if anyone has any information about any rogue casino behavior, PLEASE share that as well.
I really really really really really really really really really would love some responses; this paper is HUGE for my grade and I'm behind already (been spending too much time at Texas Hold'em, no kidding). If you don't feel comfortable responding on this page, feel free to email me - lime_yyy@yahoo.com.

Thank you all so much, happy playing!

TBH, you won't get too many responses because most of us don't consider ourselves gamblers as poker requires some skill whereas gambling doesn't

QFE. And people that consider poker gambling piss me off.
If I have a +Roi, which grows higher and higher, that isn't gambling. that is skill if I can prove consistancy.

Most people will never understand how much skill is involved in playing poker. Obviously, you have to know the odds of hitting a hand and the odds of that hand winning the pot but poker is much more than math. It is as much a mind game as anything in a way. I play more live poker than online and being able to read people is more important than being able to read your cards. A lot of the time it doesn't matter what your cards are. What matters is what the other players think you have. Poker can't be explained in a page or two in a chat forum. Sure the basics can be but I have been playing about 30 years and am still learning. I want to play the people who say that poker is easy or a luck game. Luck does play a factor of course but in the long run a skilled player will blow away a player who relies on luck or a "gut" feeling. I love to play. You mentioned the money involved. Almost everyone who is financially responsible has something that they splurge on. Some people spend their blow money on hunting or golf or whatever hobby. I like to play poker. I NEVER play with money that I can't afford to lose. If I can't walk away from the table without it then I don't sit down to start with. It is not the game that gives it a bad name to some. It is the people who are not responsible about how they play and what they play with. Good luck with your paper.

If you don't beleive poker is gambling you don't understand poker.

We've seen these posts before, I don't anybody believes you are a college student doing research.

Please don't take offense to the term "gambling," geez. I just need some responses; my fieldwork involves gathering opinions and first-person responses from poker players like yourselves; it was due last Friday and I'm trying to get at least 10 pages done before class tomorrow afternoon. Thank you ncscout for your helpful reply! PawkitAces.... I take a lot of offense to that and I'm not really sure who you think I am...

Thank you, I hope to see a couple more replies!

fyi people generally at least bother to put proper questionnaires together before making threads like this. nobody's going to help you if you just post vague questions.

1. How do you feel about the laws governing online poker/gambling?
2. How much money do you spend monthly playing poker? Do you usually end up with more money than you had or less?
3. Why do you enjoy playing poker?
4. Have you ever encountered a rogue casino online? What was your experience therein?
5. Have you ever encountered a player cheating online (i.e. collusion, bots, etc)? What did they do and what was your response (verbal, thought, or otherwise)?

1. How do you feel about the laws governing online poker/gambling?

I'm not US, so tbh its not really that big an issue for me.

2. How much money do you spend monthly playing poker? Do you usually end up with more money than you had or less?

I usually make between $600-$2000 per month.

3. Why do you enjoy playing poker?

See above. I also like the challenge of it.

4. Have you ever encountered a rogue casino online? What was your experience therein?

Nope

5. Have you ever encountered a player cheating online (i.e. collusion, bots, etc)? What did they do and what was your response (verbal, thought, or otherwise)?

Nope

I live in England.

No restrictions on poker.

No taxes on gambling.

Smug mode on.

well said shinedown.45 I agree 100% maybe this kid should change topic's for thier term paper!!! maybe read a book about poker or somethingLOL

1. How do you feel about the laws governing online poker/gambling?
Partly ilegal at the coutry i live, should be legal i think cause it doesnt harms people that doesnt want to play.
2. How much money do you spend monthly playing poker? Do you usually end up with more money than you had or less?
I never spended on poker, still new to poker. won some freerolls but already lost the cash.
3. Why do you enjoy playing poker?
Intresting and chalenging game, i can always learn new stuff.
4. Have you ever encountered a rogue casino online? What was your experience therein?
nope
5. Have you ever encountered a player cheating online (i.e. collusion, bots, etc)? What did they do and what was your response (verbal, thought, or otherwise)?
nope

First of all, poker is not really gambling. If you play enough hands the luck evens out and skill prevails.

I don't live in the US so I guess it does not apply.

I don't spend any. I make a few hundreds per month nowadays, and it's increasing.

Now if you ask how much i wager, it's a different story. If you consider I wager the money on the table every time a hand is dealt, i play about 30k hands at 50nl, so that would be $1.5 million per month. But that amount is totally irrelevant, to be honest.

It's intellectually challenging. and it's one of the very few hobbies where i can make money while playing.

nope.

nope.

Being uninformed about gambling is mistake #1 for you. I suggest you do a little more reasearch before submittimg this paper. Take a look at lotto, slots and such to get informed. i would give you an F - so far,

Big Jay

I agree that more skill than luck is required to win consistently in Poker but please don't say it's not gambling. What about calling an all in on a coin flip hand.? Gamble:"to play a game of chance for money or valuables." Chance: "to risk." Even if you believe it's a 60-40 in your favor there is still a 40% chance you'll lose. Besides all that what is the name of Kenny Roger's biggest hit..."The Gambler". "Know when to hold em, know when to fold em". He ain't talking about napkins. As far as the paper good luck you must have a pretty patient teacher if you're ten days behind. Kids are so spoiled these days

according to your definition, any economic activity is actually gambling because we live in a world that is intrinsically unpredictable so any money you spend/invest yields unpredictable results.

If you want a more realistic definition of gambling, there is probably a threshold somewhere about the level of unpredictability of the results that makes an activity gambling or not. I believe that when you consider a large enough amount of hands, let's say a few hundreds of thousand, results become predictable enough to fall below the gambling threshold.

imo, leatherass is not gambling.

You blew off his paper to gamble and now you need us to help you catch up.

Does that about sum it up?

I can tell by the questions (or lack of them) that you're WAAAAAAY behind pre-flop..... Er.... pre-paper.

Good luck...


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Belgo you are right...any money invested in something that might cause you to lose that money e.g the stock market, is gambling , but lol on the threshhold thing. There isn't some magic line that says if you are correct 99.9% of the time it ceases to be a gamble. All your knowledge and all your skill still require you to occasionally risk something to get something in return whether it be chips or to try and eliminate an opponent. My wife is right 99.9% of the time(according to her) but when we have that occasional "discussion" and it is proven that I am right she had to risk her pride for that moment. If there is a threshhold I would like to know the title that goes to anyone reaching it...just so I can call my wife that lol.

All I have to say here is that when I gamble (ie: casino action) which is NOT VERY MUCH AT ALL....I lose damn near every time. When I play poker, let me just say that I do "NOT" lose damn near every time.

There is no way on earth you can "gather data" from some random questions on a forum...if it isn't in a structured questionnaire where you can actually report your results then the "info" is unusable.

That said, poker is gambling. You can't equate gambling to "slot machines or roulette" and then say that because poker has skill it isn't gambling. Poker surely falls under a definition such as "to wager money in a game where chance is a factor". Slot machines wouldn't suddenly become non-gambling if a slight edge was given to the consumer rather than the house. There is still a chance you aren't going to come out ahead. And since the vast majority of ppl who gamble or play poker are going to do in what falls very squarely under a "small sample size" you can't act as if poker has no element of chance because if everybody played 100 million hands chance would play an insignificant role.

Over a 1 million hand + sample size sure it is highly unlikely chance has played a significant role, but there is just so much in poker you can't quantify which is a gamble (moving up stakes for example...if you constantly run like **** when trying to move up stakes, you are getting the short stick because moving up stakes is by nature a short term arrangement where variance plays a large role because you are playing for more money than that at which you built your roll).

Go look at some horror graphs on 2+2 if you don't think some players can beat the odds and run like trash over a very long periods of time. Maybe there is only a 0.1% chance you'll lose 100 buy ins to "luck" over your next 100k hands, but that means that it will happen to 1 in 1000 ppl.

Feitr, who are you quoting? No one said anything about data.

1. How do you feel about the laws governing online poker/gambling?
I'm very disturbed about the hypocricy of our government. The very people who wave the flag and babble about Land of the Free are the ones who want to impose their morality and values on the rest of us. UIGEA is terrbile and unfair.
2. How much money do you spend monthly playing poker? Do you usually end up with more money than you had or less?
In live home games, I pretty much break even. Tough competition and tourney format where anything can happen. I rarely play at casinos, but when I do I play quite tight and have won every time in the half dozen times I play. Online, I've made small deposits ($50 or $100) months or years ago at several sites and haven't had to deposit since. Playing .10/.25 games, I've been averaging $200 to $500 profit a month.
3. Why do you enjoy playing poker?
Poker is to chess what chess is to checkers. It's an intellectually challenging game where you have to think on many levels. Plus, you can make money. And home games with friends are fun, even if you don't make much money. But I don't always "enjoy" playing. It gets to be a grind and can be boring. Sometimes it's like a job.
4. Have you ever encountered a rogue casino online? What was your experience therein?
I avoid them. I don't respond to e-mail come-ons and I check shady situations at CasinoMeister.com
5. Have you ever encountered a player cheating online (i.e. collusion, bots, etc)? What did they do and what was your response (verbal, thought, or otherwise)?
My Bodog account was hacked by a key logger. He blew my entire BR of $900 in 15 minutes joy-riding. I complained vociferously to Bodog but they denied any responsibility. Their only compensation was a new bonus offer. I've learned to take computer security VERY seriously. One of my friends at the home game is always trying to short the pot, but he's an airhead, not a cheater, so we just watch him.

While you have to gamble sometimes while playing poker, that doesn't mean that poker should be considered gambling. I'll take my chances any day in poker over the lottery!

For me poker is not the same as gambling. Once you know the game a little bit more and understand pot/implied odds concepts you know it is a percentage game. So sorry, I'll not participate

For those of you who say poker isn't gambling just because you have an edge or whatever, that argument isn't really that valid. Your still wagering money on an outcome where chance plays a role.

Look at it this way.

If you were to bet with a person on the roll of a die and he was going to give you 8:1 on your money on picking a number would you consider thtis gambling? Even though on the long run you will make money, because of your mathematical edge doesn't mean this isn't gambling. Poker is exactly the same way.

whether we have an edge or not is totally irrelevant. What matters is the volume we play and nothing else.

At the atomic level, quantum theory says that everything is probabilistic. It only appears deterministic at our level because there are so many atoms at play that considering that the EV is reality makes a hell of a lot of sense.

Poker is just the same. If you have enough hands, your win rate, be it positive or negative, will appear deterministic and be based entirely on your skills instead of short term random luck.

If you choose not to answer my questions do not reply. Thank you!!!

To ncscout, tenbob, gorblid, belgosuisse, and glworden, thank you for your participation! :]]

in trying to anwser your Qs . i dont consider playing texas hldem gambling it really does take some skill ; in trying to master the game its v hard ive been playing a few yesrs and when you loose a pot u say to ur self i knew he had that hand but really theres gtreat fun to playing you cant describe it you have to expereince it for your self ; I dont really make a fourtune and i dont loose a hole lot some months im up money and some im down money it usually = s out ; dont really know of anny rouge sites but im sure there out there you just got to go with the names you know ; there was a story around a while ago about a group of players trying to cheat a poker site but quite frankley i dont really think you could unnless u work for the pioker sites then again i dont know buddy , besyt of luck with ur paper ..








LOVE LIFE PLAY TO WIN[/quote]

you have to think more in live games than in online games. most people take the real challenge out of the game buy useing poker tracker and other such help devices. All the info you need if pretty much there how much the guy bets what the hands are he bets with. Yes i know you have to play with them to get the stats but still you have them availabl. I currently don't use any such thing but i don't gamble online to much either. I like the live version better thats the way the game was supposed to be played.

I don't really consider playing online gambling. At least is isn't for me. I lose a few dollars here and there and I consider it more intertainment then gambling.

i would like to say that my experience with online casinos is that you win a little and then llose alot, when you first start out you have some good wins and when you raise the stakes is when it seems to be rigged. for example on two particuar sites i made alot of money very quikly, i meen hours not days and all of a sudden i couldnt win a thing. when i played roulette i got the same number out 4 times ina row and in the same sitting i got 0 four times out of five spins im not exactly sure what the exact odds are of this occuring but the chance of this happening is so low it is litteraly almost immpossible. I dont mind having a bit of a gamble making calculated bets but you cant win against that. so i stick to poker.

1. The laws in the US are ridiculous. Basically the government realizes that a lot of people are playing online poker and the companies they do business with are NOT U.S. companies so tax information is not relayed to the government.
Also many of the Casinos in Vegas as well as those around the country feel they are losing a lot of money to the Net.

2. I haven't deposited any money on the web sites since the government has made it so difficult to do so. I played in some freerolls made a small bankroll and continue to play online with their money.
I do play once month in a live game and have done quite well in that.

3. Poker is a great game, the interaction with the other players and trying to read the situations presented to a player make for a great experience (assuming you read it correctly)
And nothing beat the feeling you get when you bluff someone off a pot.

4. I have only played at Full Tilt, and a little at Poker Stars.
I used to play at site call Poker Room(?) a long time ago and won some money there (at the time I had actually deposited about $100).
I withdrew my money with no problem.

5. I haven't ever found a cheater online. At least as far as I could tell.

Hope this helps

OK for my last response on this please check Paw Kit Aces reply... If you don't believe Poker is gambling then you don't understand Poker. You can throw all the quantum physic rules of the universe out there to try and justify I'm not sure what ,but the bottom line is, if you bet anything on something you are not 100% sure of the outcome, then YOU ARE GAMBLING. Period Exclamation Point

Some retarded economic survey. More reason for the retarded government to put a ban on online poker.