My current view is that poker is an abstract game which is a subset of finance, and belongs in the field of finance as these are all financial decisions. Others view poker as a game of mathematics, and is described by the math itself. Others emphasize the psychological aspects. And, I suppose you can view poker as a language game.

What is poker, and where does it belong?

Poker is gambling. I think 'why do people gamble?' would be a better discussion.

Yes, you are correct. Poker is first and foremost a form of gambling. Why do people gamble? I suppose that belongs in psychology.

I view it as a mathematical-psychological game, with lots of variance.

Not well suited for gambling, a bad player loses more than in a "-EV" game.

It's a game, much like anything else.
It's a game of expected deceit, unlike much else.

One other game where deceit is not merely accepted, but also expected: the courtship game.

Thought you were going to say Stratego.

Another one that's relevant to my life right now:

Looking for an honest mechanic.

It is a concrete game (those cards are real, *****) that can be thought of in abstract terms (probability, strategy).

Behavioral economics (finance is different) explains much of where they exhibit less than a perfect style from a profit-based perspective.

Mathematics is just repeating yourself. See it being an abstract game.

Psychological is just repeating yourself. See it being a study on behavioral economics.

It isn't really a language game, other than in the same way as wandering about (and everything else) is a language game. This makes it mean nothing.

Yes well I think you're wrong. Nobody gains insight into poker with a book on behavioral economics.

Live poker is a game of low level skill (basic math), observation (reading people's reactions, analyzing other people's personalities and tendencies) and self control (staying within profitable play, masking your own emotions and intentions).

Online poker with a few exceptions like heads up, is a game of low level skill and medium level self control (programs do the observation for you).

Poker doesn't fit into categories of finance or a "language game", any more than bricklayers counting up the bricks they need and communicating to their colleagues to "watch where you're ****ing stepping" is a game of finance and language.

No poker player learns from books on behavioral economics, but behavioral economists learn plenty from the behavior of poker players.

Please note that nearly no one learns anything useful from behavioral economics books. We're (mostly) pretty well hard-wired to **** things up with great consistency.

Knowing nothing about behavioral economics I'd like to know what those economists learn from the all too often irrational acts of poker players.

They tend to win too many hands, is one instance.

No such thing. They win exactly the number of hands that they are supposed to over the long term.

I should have been more clear: They tend to use strategies that increase the number of hands that they win over time instead of using strategies that increase the amount of money they make over time.

The thing is is that there are players whose goals have nothing to do w/ money. They want to act badly, gloat, berate, moan, seek sympathy, be loud and all of the rest of the behaviors that I - and others seeking monetary gain - have to put up with. As I said, I have little idea what behavioral economics studies (outside of what I derive from the term) but, unless they are poker players themselves, I think that they are looking through their microscopes at the wrong subject.

That is the entire point of behavioral economics: To explain how (and occasionally why) people don't act in ways that a normal economist (or policy maker) would expect.

You might have an intuitive understanding of it, but idealists and theoreticians exist and behavioral economics is helpful to understand that they are idiots.

They ought to bring some psychiatrists onto the team, imo. Then they might get somewhere.

Or to understand that people frequently are idiots or to understand that theorists that do not understand that people are idiots are idiots but not all theorists are idiots. There are some very good theories that actually deal with the real world from time to time. Who developed these?

There is nothing wrong with being an idealist if you also care for the way the world works in all its glory. If Einstein weren't one you wouldnt have had General Relativity the way it came or even yet actually. The world is not advancing due to cynicism. Dreamers advance it (actually all advance it collectively but you know what i mean) when they get lucky to have their way and reach synthesis and the other famous aholes are just selfish money making noise makers that delay the progress while giving the illusion of progress by exploiting the weak human nature.

The point is in order to reach an understanding you first have to dream its possible and care to go for it from a position that definitely lacks cynicism in the effort. And that takes idealism.

Capitalist insane asylum. Crazy people check themselves in for observation.

Everyone is an idiot in their own special way. Some are capable of recognizing this in themselves, but even then only occasionally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism

Hmm...

That is not the same meaning as applied here. See disambiguation pages for idealism.

That didn't help at all

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipediaisambiguation

And not only that but when i use idealism i always imply pragmatic rationally founded ethics and proceed with science guiding the range and possibilities of these ideas.

There is no point in being an idealist and not having the ability to connect with reality and meaningfully suggest a method of change or improvement that the ideas imagine which somehow could happen.

For example it is being idealistic (in that sense) to think that if all (or the vast majority) of children were given great education, solid care at home from parents with time to devote to them every day and multiple opportunities to explore their natural skills and discover areas they enjoy, a great deal of the problems of the world would be reduced substantially.

Another example may be that eg terrorism can be defeated or severely restricted if the planet is united in a non totalitarian manner and most people have something interesting in their lives worth living for.

Scientific society is an idea also. The fact that physics needs degeometrization is another idea. The fact QM is incomplete theory and inside a new framework it will no longer be looking as strange or at all (making Einstein and Bohr both partially correct and wrong but essentially correct in the right direction of suggested change, if you assume both are missing the same framework leap to become both correct in a complimentary manner) is another idealistic direction for synthesis. Here is another idealistic viewpoint; What happens inside black holes when matter collapses and they form is very similar to the beginning of the universe and doesnt require quantum gravity yet to be studied, the singularity is never formed.

Rational Idealism can be proven wrong in its choice of synthesis of course. But a true idealist would see this as improvement because a real idealist is before all else an optimist and a student of nature.

PS: Very little of this has anything to do with poker except for the possibility that poker can be seen idealistically as a game from which we can learn a lot about human nature, probability theory, game theory and even society. A group of people from various places, fields of study and experiences can get together and give a result that the original game design never anticipated and now extends beyond that game into a greater one (and that is idealism at its best -to explore what is possible and learn from it all).