It's not so much why I play poker, but why I should not tell peeps i win anything at poker. Usually get all the little rats even asking for $$ or hinting I should send some. Now at the stage where people expect me to send money and they get pissed off when I say no....

I can understand someone saying that you should buy the drinks if you're out with a group of friends and you make more money than they do. A lot of people might semijokingly do that. But outright asking for money, that's just wierd.

I wonder if they have other friends that make a lot of money (doctor, software engineer, business owner or whatever) that they hit up like that.

I would play 5 card draw with Clint Eastwood any day

I thought Clint would play against an empty chair

Talking to people about poker is not usually a good idea in my experience , i take my son to an indoor skatepark 3 days a week for 4 hours each visit after his mom ran off with her boss saying that i play too much poker and ignore her
i obv thank her for leaving me to my grind.
theres a nice cafe where i go and everyone socializes except me .. i bring my laptop/dongle earphones and get grinding
theres a few milfs/ single moms hanging around the place and sure i could do with a f buddy but not that desperate that im going to give up a good opportunty to play poker and to be fair most are overweight.
one women walks past my grind and says hey is that poker your playing and i said yes followed by her rabbling on for about 30 minutes about her brother who has a gambling problem and is getting help... i listen and cant be bothered to explain the difference between her ******ed sports betting mug punter of a brother and me playing carefully with my bankroll
she then goes off on one about how i could get help when i had to stop her in her tracks and just say .. listen here you fat cnut .. ive also noticed that your overweight but im not suggesting you go on a slimfast diet so get out my face !
earphones back on and continue to grind

then theres the nice people that have noticed that i play poker and have decided to distract me from my grind .. old man says are you winning at that ? i said just a little bit
he responds .. its all about the cards in poker
i say no its not .. he says .. you dont have to be rude .. i say im not .. its just you dont know what your talking about so piss off ... earphones back on and continue to grind

you shuda asked her if she wanted to **** the gamble out of you... :-)

I should have said listen to me real good fatty ... i know i look miserable sitting in the corner avoiding you lot but i had to make a choice .. its either poker or banging all your krims one by one ... now im willing to negotiate a deal in which i get to spend 80% of my time playing poker and the rest banging
whats it to be ?

FYP

take the squishy machine

People just insist its rigged so no point in talking to them about it

I'm in a fraternity, and one of these two scenarios plays out constantly:

SCENARIO ONE

frat bro 1: "jimbo i heard youre a pretty good poker player"

me: "yeah i guess"

frat bro 1: "you like, play online and stuff?"

me: "well, i used to. now i just play in casinos and around campus"

frat bro 1: "oh word? i love poker. we should play sometime- i could probably beat you"

me: "ok"

SCENARIO 2

frat bro 1: "when jimbo turns 21 i'm bringing him to ac with me and he's going to make me money at the poker tables"

me: "it's not really a sure thing"

frat bro 1: "nahhh, youre gonna win me money"

The most common response that tilts me so hard is when you're +$1000, but you end the day only +$200, and everyone will ask, "why didn't you quit when you're up +$1000?"

Try to explain to any non poker player how variance works.. That's why not to tell people

friend w/ a known gambling issue : quit now, sooner or later you're going to lose it all
me : not if i study harder than most

he then gives me a clueless look like ....wtf? studying in gambling?


sometimes i think the general public has more of an understanding of a card counter than a poker player.

"oh one of those MIT guys? those guys are smart"

lol my friend says so many ******ed things ever since I told him, I ****ed up..
I called it fishing, at first he thought I was a fishermen.. Should've jus said that ..


Jus the other day he was like:
"Fishing isn't even hard earned money, you don't even need to work hard"
"U fish too much, you have a gambling problem that u need to take care of"

I said that no its a skill game that u can make money from n if someone like u was to play u would instantly lose all ur money

he said "look at how much u lose.. n no i wouldnt i kno how to play poker"

I said that in the end i win more than i lose though.. and u just proved my point, every fish thinks they can make money which in turn leads to actual players makin some good money

hes like "i kno i can play poker n win money, i played in high school.. i can probably play a guy who is as good as me and destroy him"


He doesnt know if a fullhouse beats a flush.
High school was in 2006 and he played for pennies.

Can we just say we're card counters? While not exactly true, people's perceptions would be more accurate if we just told them that instead.

"I don't get it, but it involves smart people doing stuff with cards. It's way over my head, but it seems hard."

Seems close enough. It gets the idea across, anyway.

The problem with saying we're card counters is that they would say something like, "What if they catch you and you get thrown out of the casino?"

No money in poker

"Yes I know there is some skill involved, but like BlackJack the longer you play, the more chance you have losing it all back to the casino"

"I wanna give you $2000 and get you to double it for me, if you lose the $2000 you owe me that money still"

"Online poker is rigged"

"You have a gambling problem, my girlfriend is a counselor if you need to speak to someone"

"Once you go broke, and you will go broke, then what are you going to do for money? You'll end up homeless unless you quit gambling now!"

"Yeah but how much have you lost this year"

"I never knew there was so much skill in poker... I still think that is fixed and you can never win in the long run!!"

"You play poker seriously ( smug look on his face ), can you make money doing that ( still with a smug look on his face in a sarcastic tone )" The guy in question works as a telemarketer on twenty something $$ an hour by the way.

Those are things I have heard in the last 6 months at different stages from different people.

Most people don't realize that casinos care, so you're dodging a lot of bullets there. Those who do you can say something like, "poker's the only game where the casino doesn't care because you're taking the money off the other players, not the casino."

This post puts me on lifetilt.

My biggest tilt was my father. He's a nerd (the kind that has to have his clocks all set correctly, to the second, getting the time from the atomic clock countdown on short-wave radio.) He understands that there is math involved, that it's a skill game where winners are determined over time, etc.

Even so, a mutual friend told me recently that my father wishes I would pursue something "a little less juvenile."

I find that it really needs to have a bit more credit to it, people assume its all money, coke and hookers.

Actually pretty annoying.

And dude, "a little less juvenile"? What? So working a 9-5 job like everyone else is "normal"? **** that man.

You can know something is a skill game and still consider it juvenile.

I suppose that's true. There is a professional video game circuit.