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Originally Posted by cbax9888
Not sure if this is the right section to post this. Please move if not.
Played poker and sports bet most of my life but wanted to ask others an opinion about the ethics behind poker/sports betting. I haven't played much in the last few years, partly for the reasons below.
In a "typical" job there is almost always an exchange of money for value or vice versa. For example, a construction worker builds a building (provides value) and the owner of the building pays them. Or, a cashier handles payments (provides value) and the owner of the store pays them. Usually the more value you provide the more you get paid. Not always true, examples being a teacher or first responder but for most cases it is. For example, a professional basketball player makes millions of dollars because they generate millions of dollars in tickets, jersey sales, ad space etc.
So I believe there is this conscious or unconscious driving force in most jobs that the more value you provide the more you get paid. This leads to more value being exchanged. Poker and Gambling is not like that. For you to win somebody has to lose. The more money you make, the more money somebody else loses. It feels that the driving force behind poker/sports betting is not to provide value but instead to increase the margin of which you are better at the game than the other people you are playing/betting against.
This is really just saying how much better am I at taking your money than you are at taking mine. Since that is the driving conscious or unconscious force in poker/sports betting, I feel this often leads to angle shooting/scamming etc. If you beat me in a game or win a bet, then you are better at taking my money than I am at yours. However, if I angle you and don't pay, then perhaps I am better. If you end up robbing me of the money in the end, well I suppose you would be better.
What I am saying is I believe sports betting/poker naturally leads people to steal, scam, and angle others, even if those people originally have no intention of ever doing so. Would others agree with this? If so, how do you feel about gambling/sports betting ethically? If you do it or do it for a living, and agree with my thoughts, how do you rationalize it?
Your post is very all over the place. I will try to address it in piecemeal.
Firstly, you do not even really define what "value" even is or who it is even provided for. You talk about ticket sales and merchandise. So you mean "value" as a money-making asset? A commodity? A resource? A basketball player might generate a lot of value, but literally all of it is for a massive professional sports team. Why do they pay him so much? Because he quite literally generates "value". But for no one else. Unless you mean "value" in the form of entertainment for the general public, but that isn't really what you seem to be talking about. Furthermore, the athlete might be paid millions, but see how much value is in the entire organization. He is paid peanuts in comparison to what these industries appear to generate. To bring up the topic of poker, other than to the house, the player is beholden to no one. If we are talking about "value" as generating money, the player generates value and owns all of it. Further, the player can happily state that it was their own hard work, luck, dedication, skill, perserverance, etc., that allowed them to generate that money. Finally, they can take that money and go elsewhere to spend it. What the heck does a professional sports franchise spend money on? More unnecessary stadium monstrosities?
Second: why do you talk about "generating value" and then talk about if poker is unethical? Why are you conflating the two things? Ethics is about governing behavior, not about generating value. How can a card game be ethical or unethical? The WSOP organization might be unethical, or have unethical practices, but to say that the game of poker is unethical is quite ridiculous. Speaking of ethics, though, correct me if I am wrong, but you seem to think that because the basketball player generates so much "value" for the organization they get paid millions. But the fact that they get paid millions doesn't mean that the NBA is NOT unethical. It also doesn't mean that the player isn't being exploited, in some sense (see amount organization makes as compared to the players, some of whom bring in so many eyeballs). Why do you ask about the "ethics" of the game of poker when, in your example, you are implying there is a "greater power" that essentially controls this basketball player? Do you really think that just because someone is paid millions that the controlling organization is being ethical?
Third: *******s, degens, scammers, anglers, danglers, vishers, phishers, smishers, etc., exist in every single walk of life. That poker has these sorts of characters has nothing to do with whether it is ethical. Also, in terms of just the activity of poker (that is, the game itself), I can think of nothing that is so naked in its intentions: players willingly show up and put up their own money, willingly play, and live and die based on their merits of their own decisions (and the run of the cards, of course). So simple. So beautiful. Meanwhile, we have nuclear physicists working for investment banks inventing financial instruments so arcane, whose financial wizardry is understood by no one, that apparently are "generating value". I mean, not for me. I haven't seen a single cent. Yet poker players that battle for stacks are evil people.
Fourth: You talk about how most jobs are there to provide value. This is an incredibly tenuous assumption. After all, I can argue that basically every job in the "modern" world is complete and utter BS because they are all quite literally made up. In the "old world", growing crops and hunting wild animals weren't jobs. They were necessities. Ditto for doctors, firefighters, etc. Today, we have jobs like Social Media Managers that are so obviously made up it is laughable. Software developer? Look, software has done wonders. But let's face it, mother nature never needed to hire a C++ maintainer. You also assume that there is some connection (correlated or causal) between being paid more and generating more value. I mean, you gave a pretty extreme example, but this is also a tenuous assumption. Anecdotally, I know plenty of people (outside of teachers, etc.) that generate tons of value for their respective organizations and get paid peanuts. Meanwhile, I have worked for at least 2, but not more than 20, bosses that were incredibly well-paid and generated exactly ****-all (including in terms of profit). Honestly, the fact that so many made-up jobs are being automated (from factory floors to help desks) only further convinces me they were all BS jobs anyway. Furthermore, at least, Americans seem to be waking up to the post-Pandemic idea that their bosses suck and they would rather really be doing something else. I would hope most pro poker players are obvious to the fact that they play a ****ing card game for a living, that they can dispense with all of the BS that comes with pretty much every other job in the modern world. Other people are slowly waking up to this fact: That they hate their jobs and that they can quit.
Fifth: I would agree that the game of poker does incentivize crappy behavior. But so do all other pursuits in the name of profit. I can think of so many examples, as I am sure can you. To say poker is "unethical" for this is silly, IMO. This is like saying the Internet is unethical for allowing hackers to steal data en masse.
Sixth: Probably the most important part: "It feels that the driving force behind poker/sports betting is not to provide value but instead to increase the margin of which you are better at the game than the other people you are playing/betting against."
I think this is fundamentally the most correct thing you wrote. But it is not just poker or sports betting.
Nearly every single competitive game has advanced greatly in the last twenty years. We have games now that might have been "niche" but are getting more popular or rediscovered (MTG, old-school strat games, etc.). Chess is solved. Poker is, so they say, on its way. But it is not just these table games. Athletes and participants in every single competitive pursuit I can think of have greatly increased in skill level. Even in just physicality. Have you noticed that even pro poker players are taking their physical regimens seriously? The average player in most games is probably crushing the average player from even five years ago. Ten years? Forget about it. This is as true in poker as everything else. Poker is a little different, of course, in that luck is a pretty big factor. But look at any other sport or game. Performance has skyrocketed. They no longer even focus on just the technicalities of the game any more. Athletes have coaches, wellness experts, trainers, psychologists, etc., etc. Watch the Triton Charity event. Some of the pros talk about the preparation that goes into these tournaments. What can the average Joe, with a job and other responsibilities, even do?
Look at CSGO. I can point my mouse and click, too. But I suck. And I don't get paid hundreds of thousands to do it. Look at StarCraft. I can execute 150 actions per minute. Some of these pros are hitting 450. Good luck competing with that. At least poker there aren't these incredibly real-time moments, and is rather turn-based, which means you can at least keep up. I can't sink a free throw to save my life. My friend gets sinks them consistently. He isn't in the NBA.
Furthermore, this is happening in every. Single. Industry. Insurance companies run massive algorithms to predict values about you and generate premiums. Ecommerce sites try to predict how consumers will make purchases. Online streaming services try to predict what you will watch next and try to make a recommendation for you based on data points it has seen about you in the past. Everything is becoming data-driven and to the subjects and whims of our (lack of) predictive power. Speaking of which...
Prediction: I truly believe that, so long as we see a long run as humanity, the more we automate these bullshit jobs (and most jobs are bullshit, IMO), the more we'll play games. And the more we'll predict things. From markets to disease outbreaks. It gets truer and truer every year. We went from rolling literal bones to rolling figurative ones. We've gone from figurative to the most abstract, complex games you can think of. We often pay people millions to do this, and there is often a billion-dollar industry that surrounds it. Then there is an entire other industry of individuals and groups that bets on these events. In the process, these individuals hone statistical and predictive processes which become adopted in other industries. Gaming (that is, gambling) problems originally led to ideas that allowed human beings to make the breakthrough into probability theory, and then to risk-taking, and from risk-taking to the modern world. This seems pretty valuable to me. It seems fitting that games have been at the forefront of the AI and machine learning explosion, as well.
Having said all of this: I play poker because it is fun, I like the competition, and I want to make money. I don't do it for "ethics" or to generate value for someone else. If I want to feel better about myself or generate value, I'll volunteer (which I sometimes do).
As William S. Burroughs puts it: "There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games."
Get used to it. It's only gonna get more obvious.
