Well, maybe in a raked game they'll do the same harm, although they will still lose money more slowly. In an unraked game (say a home game), they will definitely not do the same harm, as there will be no "sharks" siphoning off their money and they will just lose it to other gamblers, then win it back, and so on.

It isn't entirely fair to assume that no problem gamblers are also good players. Even if all or most problem gamblers are worse poker players than healthy poker players, among the hypothetical pool of only problem gamblers, there should still be big enough skill disparities where the best players will be beating the weaker ones pretty badly, IMO. You may be right that perhaps the money remains in the poker economy longer, since problem gamblers are less likely to take money out of poker for use in the real-world, but I'm not sure how big this effect is, as long as the problem gambler player pool is sufficiently large.

Compare with chess and go tournaments.

In poker tournaments at least 70-100% of the entrants have a realistic chance of winning. Typically 80-90% of the money collected is returned to the participants in prizes.

In a typical chess or go tournaments only the top 5-10% have any chance of winning, and only around 0-20% of the entrance money is returned in prizes.
So the poker tournament is less moral than the chess tournament

That obviously depends on whether you think it is immoral or not.

Players with an IQ of under 85? What proportion of players would have an IQ that low?

I play pub poker and I doubt anyone there has an IQ of under 100. Not many geniuses, but plenty of people hovering around average intelligence and a moderate amount above that.

I have seen plenty of fishy play from people that would easily be above 120 IQ, I don't think we need to assume that poor poker players are literally ******ed or suffering from dementia.

As far as limiting what people with children can gamble - I suppose if a country was enough of a socialist nation then that might be feasible, but I don't think that happens even in countries like China. Of course if there is evidence that a parent is neglecting their children then I suppose social services should step in and do something about it.

Do I agree that all citizens should be wrapped in cotton wool to protect them from harm? Nope!


Maybe banning people with an IQ of under 85 from posting in forums would be a good idea though . . . (JK)

Morality is a man-made concept that differs for everybody.

I work with a lot of extremely sharp people - phds, some of the best programmers I've ever seen, etc. Most of them are terrible fish at poker.

True, but short of anarchy (is that what you propose?) we have to take a shot at imposing morality on some who don't agree with those mores.

asd

I just feel like the question of whether poker is moral or immoral is pretty much useless. Some people will think it is, some people won't. My basic idea of morality is: If it doesn't hurt anybody without their consent, I'm not opposed to it.

Poker would fall under the category of not hurting anybody without their consent (they know the risks when they play). I don't propose anarchy as a solution to differing moralities. There are many things that I am not morally against but I don't engage in because they are illegal or would infringe upon another's morals, so I don't think freedom of morality = anarchy.

Yeah, IQ<85 in a poker room would be unusual. David Sklansky estimates the average IQ in a Las Vegas poker room at 125.

That seemed high, but when I thought about it, it made perfect sense. Poker involves logic, applied mathematics, and keeping a lot of numbers and ideas in your head: pot size, M of the other players, knowing opponent ranges, understanding what to play against villian range, pot control, table image, tells, getting the correct pot odds, controlling pot odds--and that's just to be a solid winner at micro to low limits.

At a higher level, you're playing against better players, and you're asking yourself questions like, what percentage of the time should I bluff to be unexploitable?

Clearly, someone with an 85 IQ could not think like this. For example, could you explain to Mr. 85 the math of how often he would have to be successful with his blind steals to make a profit? Of course not. 85 would be a big fat fish against anyone who could read and understand a Harrington book.

When you play every day, none of the things in the list 3 paragraphs about this one are a big deal, in fact, it's probably automatic. But to do all those thing so that's it second nature, I'm pretty sure that even an average IQ wouldn't cut it.

Poker is the only sports where you try hard to find the weakest opponents.
Try to beat this.

This is because poker is not a sport--it is a game.

A good poker player maximizes the ratio between the $ level they play at and the disparity between their ability and the ability of the other players at that level.

I wouldn't go around my campus trying to find little games where I might take $20 off of a couple of fish. I have a skill advantage over a lot of players that actually consider themselves card players, so I will play with them, at much higher stakes.

-It's all economical

I don't understand this post, because I was talking about people who just lose massive quantities of money at poker, stacking off with Ax or baby pairs for instance. People who have no clue about any of the stuff you're talking about. It's been pretty clear to me playing microstakes online that some of the people I've played against were not the sharpest tools in the shed. And I don't judge only by the ridiculous poker moves they make, but by the moronic things they type in the chat box.

Bingo.

Chess is a game, Scrabble is a game, and people who play those games usually seek out others who are at their same ability level.

I am pretty poor, and I need the money, so I'm not going to stop playing. But if I got to the point where I had more money than some of the people I was felting, I would have to seriously reconsider.

interesting thread/concept. i dont think locking it up serves any purpose, its a question many players could come across at different stages of their poker journey

personally, i think if the players know they risk losing their money there really is no issue unless the gambling is destroying/sabotaging their life/family/job etc.

however, we cannot really know whether that is happening alot of the time, so "innocent untill proven guilty" in my books. in any case, its an interesting idea

"A sucker deserves to lose his money" also this thread is stupid, There are so many different philosophical ways to go about discussing this. IMO Moral statements don't describe anything and are neither true nor false. They just express emotion. You are just saying you have a negative emotion towards "taking money from fish." Other people have a different emotion towards this. IMO you can't have a moral disagreement because there is nothing there to disagree about-- Moral properties don't exist

Do you really think that these people could possibly have an IQ of under 85? Really? Have you ever talked with someone that has an IQ that low?

The microstakes idiots that play super bad and make moronic comments are almost certainly above average intelligence - stupid people just aren't that arrogant! My guess is that the bad players are in the top 25% for intelligence, the majority of people that they come across aren't as smart as them and they become arrogant and think that they know better than everybody else. This arrogance is helped by cognitive dissonance which makes them think that over 95% of people are dumber than them. They think that they can outplay most people and get their money in bad so often that it isn't funny.

I've had a player call me a 'noob' when I lost a pot to him - I had 2 pair and he had a set, nothing unusual. I had a chuckle to myself over his ignorance - anyone that plays a $1.20 sit'n'go and calls other people a noob has to be pretty delusional about their own abilities. Taking money from people like that is a real pleasure!

To me anyone with intelligence under the top 10% doesn't seem very smart and I see plenty of stupid things done by people that would be in the top 10%. Hell, I've done stupid things plenty of times in my life and the results of my Mensa test put me in the top 1%. Anyone that concludes that a bad poker player is below 100 IQ (let alone below 85) has no clue IMO. If you base your estimates of IQ on poker playing ability then my IQ was much lower when I started playing poker than it is now - either my IQ has tripled over the last few years or poker ability isn't solely governed by IQ.

Phil Ivey said he is really lucky to be good at poker, because he loves gambling so much.

Okay, first of all I never said bad players were only to be found among those with IQs less than 85. In fact, that strikes me as pretty nearly impossible (especially since the definition of "bad" is relative rather than absolute in this context). My point was really more that there are some bad players who are bad, are not smart enough to become winning players, and also not smart enough (or too addicted) to know they should give it up if they can't afford it.

So the other 75% of the population just doesn't play poker, for some reason? Or, what, the good players are not in the top 25%? This just doesn't hold water.

Let me also be clear that I won't deny there are some bad players in the top 25% of intelligence, and they are just smart enough to be arrogant as you describe without realising how FOS they are. But I tend to think that more than 75% of losing players are in fact not in the top 25%, especially if we're talking about losing players who can't afford to lose the money (which is an important distinction in a thread about morality).

that's cool

Yep, that is indeed what I'm suggesting. And not just poker, many games that require doing some thinking and using strategy - people that aren't very smart tend to avoid such activities.
The less smart gamblers are often at the machines pumping coins into them or playing roulette or blackjack or whatever.

I have yet to meet a person playing poker that isn't mentally competent enough to decide whether they should be gambling or not, as far as I can tell they are gambling with discretionary income and acting on their own free will. Until I see some evidence that the people I am taking money off are unfortunate victims of addiction or are too mentally incompetent to decide whether or not to gamble then I'll keep playing and I see nothing immoral about it.

just to add on to this thought how many poker players do you see at a table with scratch off tickets? Poker is not a game for those who are brainless...thats the lotto, i.e. "A tax on those that are bad at math"

i truly believe that if someone is better than u at the table, he has put in more work or quality time in than you, so its ur responsibility to get better. the whole system is build on ppl who think they are better than u and ur proven them wrong because u think more clearly and have put in more work than them(and a whole lot of other stuff).. period

the top companys on the stock market eat up the small companys everyday, becuase they are managed better. hard work and dedication is required, anyone that supports the immoral argument is just frustrated and should quit poker or work harder.

but i am one of the ppl who also thinks, because our job does not support the society as much as other jobs, we should be more liberal donater to charity than john doe.

I wouldn't say that the people who play these games always seek out the people at their same ability level. If you play chess for money in New York or something, you are primarily hustling people you know you can beat. You don't wanna crush people, but play them closely so they think they have a chance. The difference between these games is the lack of variance. Because of the lack of variance, the players who are really good will be revealed much more quickly.

Now compare this to the game I've been grinding lately, which is hyper turbo 6mans. My ability is very well masked because, to the novice player, some of the plays I make will appear moronic (shoving A2C from SB >6BB, etc...). I get called a donk and a moron relentlessly.

Like any other job, poker is all about maximizing profit, and there is nothing wrong with that. You pick your spots where your investment is going to either be highest, or sometimes the most consistent, and you make your money.

I know plenty of people that just play poker "for the fun of it" and they play roulette and the slots just the same.

How much is "too much" for a person to lose? What if a person just loses their beer money for the week? How about all of their spending money? What if they lose their spending money +the electric and water bill?

IMO the morality of the issue doesn't come into how badly a person gets busted, it comes down to the fact that everybody playing is a knowledgable , consenting adult, and they have a right to invest their money however they choose (even if their investment has no chance of bearing fruit).

haven't read the whole of this thread,but i'd assumne this point has been made in some form.
but anyway.................

sometimes i bet on a horse.not very often mind, as i don't know enough about them to make it profitable.

but when i do , i do so in the full knowledge that the person accepting my bet (the bookmaker) has an in built edge and a team of experts protecting that edge that know a lot more than me about horse racing.

and this is the important point.


i still CHOOSE to make the bet.

in the same way that worse poker players than me(and i'm not that good, just know the basics) CHOOSE to play poker with me.

it all comes down to choice.

playing poker is no more immoral than playing any game.