Global Sports: Poker: Is It Worth the Effort

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Poker: Is It Worth the Effort

By Thomas Kearns


Anyone can learn poker rules quickly enough, online access and interface are easy, and there really is no reason not to try. Online poker is vastly successful. There isn't a gambling site online which does not offer poker games. A dedicated player becomes part of a community, acquires friends, and perhaps even his livelihood.

All or most poker game varieties are available for download for free. They offer safe practice for the novice. You get to try your hand against p.c. opponents and may adjust difficulty so as to easily experience successive winning, feeling the pleasure of addiction spread through your system like a shot of good liquor.

You are seated cozily in front of your computer to play all online games. There's no reason to worry about your body language or trying to read the faces and gestures of your opponents, each with his or her make-up, ticks, and poker-face tricks. Despite this fact, although extremely fun, perfecting your strategy against software is not comparable to live action, it's rather like doing your best at tennis against a wall or shooting up cardboard targets. Technically, there is not much comparison between a poker game and a gun fight, and unless you are in a Robert Rodriguez movie you can depend on a professional not having a sawed off shotgun pointed at you from across the table. But since both gun fights and poker for real money (as opposed to virtual) involve a constant sense of danger the parallel is warranted.

For this reason the games against human opponents are not merely fun, but eerily fun. It is this kind of fun that makes addiction of the most powerful kind. Someone may wonder whether poker is anything more than a game of patience, these people may have never handled anything more dangerous than a game of Spider Solitaire. Besides skill, chance or luck it is important that this is the essence of the game. Pervaded by danger is a live poker session without the possibility to reset only to Fold.

Many people are turned off by precisely this. While betting on the value of their hands make some people feel irresistibly "alive". The money, time, and energy to spend are musts but these are controllable factors. You must be willing to make the effort to learn strategy. A player who doesn't will lose and grow tired of trying if he only approaches the game simply in the crude hope for a few quick wins. Sour is the taste of danger and one wishes to rinse it out as fast as possible.

Danger is delicious to the real player. That is why he is at the table or computer. His stuff and bluff is known by the player. What is practical within his power he knows and does not indulge in vain fantasies. Just as the rock climber is there for the sheer height, he or she is there for the chance. In the game the music of chance must be heard and learned. Even then it will be worth the effort of an unlucky session.




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