Upping The Ante

Like many people in the United States, I've become caught up in the recent poker craze. Though I've played a bit since childhood, it was only through the recent cultural rise of poker into the mainstream of sports and entertainment that I've really taken it seriously. This process started a few years ago when I first saw a televised poker tournament. After watching a second show, I started to seek it out. That graduated into playing on the internet, then playing cash games in casinos, then playing in professional tournaments. At this point it is a pretty serious -- and increasingly profitable -- hobby.

You learn a lot about people when you play poker. Things like character, strength of will, intelligence, discretion, guts, and discipline all bubble to the surface over long stretches of play. Unlike most other casino games, poker is a direct one-to-one competition between the bettors. (The casino takes their cut of the money in play, and facilitates competition between the players.) Deeply observing the other players becomes an exercise of survival -- the better you can read and understand your opponents, the more likely you are to win. Trouble is, they don't want to be read. So they are either trying to prevent you from reading them altogether, or attempting to misdirect you so that your read isn't accurate. It becomes a complicated interplay of game theory, observation skills, psychology, intuition, and skill.