I have always been mystified by the popularity of poker. To me, it is an unpleasant game.

First - the fact that it's played for real money. If I win, I feel like a common swindler stealing money that someone could use to pay their bills or buy something nice for themselves. If I lose, I feel like a swindler's victim. And if the people around the table happen to be my friends - why would I ever wish to victimize them, or ruin their image in my mind by watching them victimize others?

Second - the lack of information. Many interesting games provide incomp9lete information of game state to the players, which one then needs to reconstruct. But with poker, the lack of information is so severe that one has no hope of reconstructing the game state - reasonable possibilities are too many to analyze, one is forced to pretty much guess and make gambles. It's an unpleasant experience.

It seems like a game for people whose brains are wired in a manner incompatible with mine. If I discover that someone likes poker, I find them rather suspicious. And people who teach poker to their own children - like the article'a author - are, to me, utterly incomprehensible.

If you ignore the externalities of winning/losing money the thing that the betting brings to poker that is very hard to replace is the impact it has on the players decision making. People playing poker with "funny money" play the game fundamentally differently to the extent it's almost a different game (arguably worse, certainly less predictable) entirely.

If you take the money out of it you have to replace it with something that matters to the players outside of the game itself for it to work.

(On the lack of information - some versions of poker are different than others but imo Texas Holdem has enough shared information that, combined with the knowledge that people really care about winning or losing informing your ability to read them based on their actions enables very strategic gameplay - the existence of a pro scene with players that consistently do well at a high level of play is evidence of this)

As another aside - I see similar complaints about strategy games that include RNG for things like attack values, and I also disagree with that criticism. I would argue that risk management is an interesting skill that's very hard to include in a game with perfect information.

> Second - the lack of information. … But with poker, the lack of information is so severe that one has no hope of reconstructing the game state.

To me, full-information games feel immensely boring, they all look like a harder version of Tic-Tac-Toe that require a bigger brain. Just don't make mistakes and you're guaranteed to win. Harder games like chess just make it so incredibly expensive and attention draining that only a special kind of people get really good.

The fun part of Poker for me is exactly the psychological game of reconstructing the hidden info. Tuning your intuition when you know you still lack it is also fun and revealing.

Regarding teaching children: bluff and lies are rampant in real life. Poker teaches to take it into account and to do it yourself in a no-consequence conditions. Even if you never resort to it you need to know what it feels like to understand others.

It's the first time I've been classified as suspicious, to my knowledge. Cool.

A quick take:

> reasonable possibilities are too many to analyze, one is forced to pretty much guess.

You could say the same thing about chess, but an experienced player wouldn't, because they know which candidate moves are reasonable and which lines to delve into through intuition shaped by experience.

Similarly, you might say the same about poker. The possible hands your opponent has are actually quite large, but an experienced player can have a reasonable idea of the possible hands and their probabilities, which may involve eg ignoring most hands as unrealistic and bucketing hands into classes.

> Second - the lack of information. Many interesting games provide incomp9lete information of game state to the players, which one then needs to reconstruct. But with poker, the lack of information is so severe that one has no hope of reconstructing the game state - reasonable possibilities are too many to analyze, one is forced to pretty much guess and make gambles. It's an unpleasant experience.

Poker is basically the same type of game as "Among us". You might have some hints but you're not supposed to be able to entirely recreate the game state. If you can, the game is boring.

"or buy something nice for themselves" like spending an evening playing a game with friends? Of you are playing against strangers, it isn't on you what someone else did with their money. As for you, you works only play with money you are willing to lose. Of course poker isn't for everyone.

I totally agree with your first point.

Money cheapens social interactions. It reduces them to competitive advantage, exploiter or exploited. I do not want to interact with anyone that way, ever. Certainly not friends.

But I acknowledge that this is oversimplified. It is possible for mature people to find an appropriate level of heightened excitement/tension due to the elevated consequences of money. Most people have the self-control to handle/compartmentalize it, or to avoid levels where the consequences become meaningful to them (this gets harder if alcohol is involved, which it seems to always be).

This appropriate level will vary by group, but there seems to be a persistent conflict between "excitingly meaningful" and "respectfully modest" amounts of money. And of course everyone's monetary circumstances are different. And there's a social pressure to participate which may exceed your circumstances. And there's an issue where the strong (experienced) players have no choice but to prey upon the weak (new or less smart) players. These issues are the inescapable ugliness that I just can't get over.

So I will never play any game for money, and I sometimes wonder whether people who enjoy such predatory thinking patterns are deserving of a standard level of trust.

I know it's not that simple, but sometimes it is.

The other arguments, about teaching strategy vs tactics, human psychology (under stress), working with imperfect information, calculated risks, etc, are all valid and important too. And I believe that playing for money elevates these lessons. Some people (for pleasure or necessity) choose to be hard-nosed in life. My enduring privilege is that I do not need to be, and I am very grateful for that.

It's a choice to play for money and how much. When I play with friends, there's only a $20 buy-in and no rebuys. Makes for a far cheaper night than going to a pub or movie.

As a kid (~12 year old) I played for matchsticks.

> reasonable possibilities are too many to analyze, one is forced to pretty much guess and make gambles. It's an unpleasant experience.

It’s okay to not like popular things, not every game is for every person. The thing you describe as unpleasant, is what some people enjoy about the game.

> It seems like a game for people whose brains are wired in a manner incompatible with mine. If I discover that someone likes poker, I find them rather suspicious.

Well, that is a good chunk of the population. Which isn’t to say it’s wrong to be suspicious of most people, but I’m not sure poker is an reliable indicator.

I think your 2nd reason is actually why poker is so popular. A lot of the joy of poker (at least for me) is trying to learn to read the other players. I generally play with friends and I find it emotionally intimate in a strange sort of way. Probably not for people who don't enjoy bluffing games though.

Edit: It's also a socially acceptable time to lie your ass off. Maybe it's a hit like how GTA is for some people as well.

> First - the fact that it's played for real money.

Don't play for real money then. I played a lot of poker with friends, but never for money - everybody gets the same amount of chips at the start and the winner is the last man standing (i.e. the winner of the random all in once most players are out, usually)

poker, without the money, isn't much different from any other card game. We used to play poker as a family game with a butter tub of pennies that all went back into the pot when we were done. It's very similar to rummy or bridge. Part skill part luck. Like pretty much any board game.

Add to the list that for most of the game, you're not actually playing! Even in more action packed variants like Omaha you spend a lot of time folded watching the others at the table play. (Although that does also have some of the enjoyment of playing, it's not the same.)

What about other games that people play for real money where the money for the winners comes from the losers?

For example in amateur chess tournaments it is common for the prize money to come out of the entry fees. Fairly typical might be a $15 dollar entry fee in advance or $20 at the door, and a prize fund of $350 ($200 first, $100 second, $50 third) based on 30 entries. It will be lower if they get fewer entries, but let's say they get exactly 30. Then 3 players are going home with more than they came with. The other 27 are going home $15 or $20 in the hole.

Would you feel bad if you played in such a tournament and finished in the top 3? Some of the 27 losers might have had a better use for their entry fee.

> And if the people around the table happen to be my friends - why would I ever wish to victimize them, or ruin their image in my mind by watching them victimize others?

No one is being victimised. Everyone's signing up to potentially lose their money. It doesn't have to be very much money to make it work well, but it generally needs to be some money.

How is it swindling if you have all agreed to play a fair game?

You do have incomplete information, but to the extent you describe it only exists within a single hand. If you play for a couple of hours, you get more information. That's the point. You're not playing the cards, you're playing the people holding them.

And that's a great allegory for life, and you can learn a lot that will help you in life in general.

As such, I find people who don't teach poker to their own children - like yourself - are, to me, utterly incomprehensible.

You don’t have to play poker for money. Whenever I played poker as a kid, or with friends, we never played for money. We just divided up the chips and played until someone won them all.

Blackjack, while still a gambling game with a lot of randomness, would be a far better choice for children; particularly learning about calculating the probability of getting a card you want.

It’s a card game that does not have to be played for money. It’s a game of risk using tokens. It’s pretty great considering you just need a deck of cards. How can people like yourself be so comfortable to openly judge others for a card game?

Poker is not your thing, we got it.