Bridge is played in clubs throughout the world. there's no money at stake when players play. Why can't poker do the same? Why does everyone wanna gamble while playing poker?

Poker with no betting would just be a game of random luck. At least Hold'em would be, anyway - there would still be a little skill in games with choices (draw, declaring high/low, etc.). That said, there are plenty of sites that offer play money poker if that's what you like. And there are subscription/membership-based poker sites.

The comparison to bridge doesn't make any sense.

Is this some kind of strange level?

I seem to remember Doyle Brunson talking about playing penny two penny auction bridge or something like that in Super System when he went broke to build back his roll. Sure you can't gamble on bridge?

yes you can gamble on bridge. But most of the bridge population don't.
where in poker most gamble. although more people probably play for play money on stars than play for real money. lots of the players don't play as good as real money players.

I think ClubWPT is membership based poker non gambling. So if you want to spend 20 bucks a month with no chance of winning any cash prizes, that's an option.

Anyway, poker is a gambling game. Play money poker already exists and it's boring and dull because the fun and excitement in poker comes from the gambling aspect. At least for me anyways.

Betting is an integral part of poker. It's an entirely different game without it. Betting isn't a part of bridge. You could certainly wager on the results of the game, like you could with any card game, but it's not built into the game mechanics.

Playing poker without money is useless. It's the risk/reward that makes a poker game.

People can play as stupid as they want without anything to win/lose. There's just no point.

As trite as it is, Farha is right when he says that poker is a game played with money where the cards only settle the ties.

You don't understand what poker is.
Like Bobo said, poker is a game where betting is part of the structure of the game. It's not a game that "includes" betting, i.e., you could play without betting.

It's like saying, why don't we play tennis without a net? Ok sure, but that's not tennis.

The risk/reward doesn't have to involve money. If there was a series of moneyless tournaments that had a leaderboard for those who do the best, then there could be a point if enough people place sufficient value on seeing their name on the leaderboard.

"Oh you bet $0 that you have better cards than me? Ok **** you, show it I call"

Leaderboard to win nothing? What sort of boring, unambitious people do you know? If you've got that sort of time to waste you need to take a serious look at things.

Take the money out of poker, and it's not poker. You can't bluff someone who's got nothing to lose. Simple.

The high stakes play money plo on stars is 10x as tough as real money micros plo.

A lot like play money. The problem is, you get people with very different level of personal investment in the results. Start shoving right away, if you go on a lucky run, you move up the leaderboard quickly. If it doesn't work out, you move on and do something else with your time. There might be ways to mitigate this (make the leaderboard long-term?), but I think it's pretty tough to come close to duplicating the effect real money consequences have.

I have no idea this is true, but it makes sense that if you're able to structure the game so that people had to invest a lot of time to get to these stakes, they're going to take it seriously. The problem is, that means a lot of working up through low-level play money, and doing so again if you go busto.

The main problem is variance. As soon as the skill levels of the players are similar, Luck will be more important than skill in poker, especially in a tournament. Therefore the leaderboard will never really work.

Yes my 5 high gets beat by his ace high

I can do something else

I can remember wrong here but I think you can buy play money for real cash so no need to start from 0, also you get free play money every 4 hours or so if you click the ”give me free playmoney”-button

I’d be willing to bet money that 10 years in the future, >80% of people who play poker on the internet don’t wager their own real money.

Why should players take play-money online tournaments serious and not just punt away their stacks? I don’t know, but there are a lot of people who play other stuff like chess or backgammon online without real money. And I don’t even want to start with Candy Crush.

I think Go Fish is your game op.

I've never been a play money poker player. I always played for atleast some money.

But I did play some pokerstars vr and got talking to some of the more serious players on there.

The system there is a weekly leaderboard with the player who wins the most chips during a week of playing cash tables wins the leaderboard. The winner gets a special ingame item (currently special rings).

For a lot of those more serious players they are treating it much like speed-runners or highscore gamers do.

Not my thing but i get to understand the motivations behind the actions a little bit more.

Yes, some sites allow that, but once again that means the players have something in the game - the chips they are betting have an actual value to them.

That number's pretty high, but I suppose it's possible. I think it depends on whether governments can get their act together, and how prevalent botting becomes. Not that the success of real money poker would suppress the success of a well-done free game, but if real money play stayed strong, the % wouldn't be as high.

If they're creative, they may be able to make something like that work, by doing things like this:

And in spite of my earlier remarks about play money, there are a lot of people who play it now, even when there is nothing truly at stake, so it's certainly not impossible that if they were able to use ideas like the one above, it could gain more traction. Obviously it would mean a much different financial model for the sites, and I don't think membership-based funding, as proposed in the OP, would be the way forward. I think this would be a very different market than real money online poker. Of course there would be overlap, but I think there would be more overlap with existing game players of other free games. Decent chance that if it ever really took off, it would be offered by companies that aren't involved in online poker now.

You can always play the little dinky freerolls that run in just about every town or city. No personal financial risk, just a casual game of poker.

just the idea of this makes me angry.

also people still bet on bridge.... ugh just the thought of dealing with plebs with no gamble for fun?!?! op youve ruined my day.

the WSOP app is very well done. Fun rakeback promos and such. Incentives to play more, they make it fun. I play like 150 hands a week on there when I'm watching the news at night, etc.

+1. But instead of angry, I am amused with laughter. Btw OP, in general bridge is played by many of the upper echelons in our society (aka filthy rich but not all of course). They consider that almost like golf - pure competition or "sport" where money plays no incentive nor should it since in fact, bridge is a way to diversify away from the rest of their lives which is always involving money. Bridge serves their purpose of still keeping the spirit of pure competition as fun without anything serious at stake.