Hello dear SteemIt users!
In our today’s post I’d love to share with you a few personal thoughts on similarities between speculations on cryptocurrency markets and playing online poker, by many considered to be madness or, to put in in different words – pure gambling.
I bet you must have seen numerous, splendorous and full of pump scenes from Hollywood action movies taking place in casino, or casinos (for instance ‘Casino Royale’), where the roulette table was standing just next to the poker table.
Today I would like to disprove this prevalent, ongoing and repetitive lie, that is poker being a highly addictive, gambling game. Key to the success in playing poker game is mediated/conditioned by countless different factors. Having the ‘risk’ factor included in the overall equation, which does exist indeed, as we are fully dependent on our starting cards that we are dealt in the beginning of each and every hand we play, there is a way of significantly improving our objective odds to win due to the experience (counted in millions of played hands), skills (objective and mathematically/probability backed up decisions we make at the table) and mathematical calculations made, thus it is possible to minimize aforementioned ‘risk factor’ in a particular game played, eventually making it work in your favor. Another factor that plays a major role in poker competition is your ‘psychological/emotional management’ skill and your resistance against the psychological pressure. An ability to manage your emotions can be learnt, conditioned and programmed, as it is falls under the volitional control, being one of the prime functions of our frontal lobe. That is a game changer that actually allows us to win the games that are highly unlikely to be won as long as based on pure math and statistic data. To sum up, key factors and the conditions that must be met as long as we are talking about long-run successful records in Texas Hold’em. These are the control of your emotions, the ability to do quick math, there are about 30 basic formulas (stating mostly for counting ins and outs – probability/likelihood of completing a particular poker figure depending on the cards we get in the beginning and at each and every stage of the game compared with the overall number of cards in the deck VS the same probability that other players may get minus the cards we have and the cards already revealed), that can be actually learnt by heart making the process a lot easier for unexperienced players. Another crucial skill is adjusting the range of the hands we enter the game with, including the importance of the position at the table in a particular hand. What is also worth mentioning, is observing other players and moves they make in given, problematic situations, backed up by the significantly important sample of games played against certain opponent, basing on which all the statistics picturing the profile of the player are made. This actually allows predicting the decisions that are going to be made in particular situation at the table by each player. Just like in chess, it’s all about being ahead of the curve.
Throughout my entire ‘career’ have I frequently come across the argument stating that ‘an average/quite a bad player’ is actually capable of defeating ‘the master’ (however one is defined, let’s call one a good player for the sake of an example), because of having been dealt objectively stronger starting cards in the beginning of the hand. Indeed, described situation is highly likely to take place. Well, theoretically, at least considering very short time span. Assuming that described players played at least >1000 hands against each other (that’s a little bit confusing as head-ups are way more complex and skill-demanding than average short, 6 players tables), there is no way the worse player can come away unscathed from the game. The less-skilled one always ends up losing everything, since the more hands you play and the bigger the statistically significant hands sample gets, the more the luck factor gets replaced with decisions made based on the skill. If poker was a pure gambling game, it would be actually possible either for you, me or your siblings to chase $1.000.000 prize in random game of high-stake poker, even tomorrow. However, it will not happen most likely. Another fact that people seem to overlook as it doesn’t match their lines, is a fact that for several years the names of the top high-rollers in the poker industry have not changed, changing the ranks on the chart instead.
Why is poker pictured as a gambling game, then?
Well, the answer is quite simple. It’s all about the gray zone and hoops which the government and all investigating authorities would have to jump through to control it, or, to make the long story short: tax evasion. On the top of that, all the arguments used, serving this whole dispute are kind of lame, the conclusion is that the government can take better care of you than you can. You are just a part of a herd and you can get easily fooled and outplayed by making stupid decisions – that’s the role of the government to prevent you from it. The truth is, that the government and any other public institution you can only think of, don’t give a flying f%3$ about your account balance in the end of the day – it’s all about how much THEY can cash in, so you end up being parted with your many either way. It’s the same story with treating the cancer and pharmaceutical industry – it’s all about being treated, not about actual recovering. In almost every country in the world – Poland, Thailand, China, to name just a few, big lotteries are legal and backed up by the government, meaning: TAXED. I am not even trying to count your odds of hitting the jackpot. Is gambling illegal then? One’s point of view depends on the point where one sits.
Here is where cryptocurrencies come in handy. Anonymity of the users (still somehow limited for the time being) and decentralization are a huge problem governments have to face nowadays, hence if no solution is found, things will slowly but steadily get out of their control. Trading cryptocurrency can be successful and profitable under the condition of proper emotion management and deep market analysis, including accurate predictions of the market changes based on technical analysis of the charts. Unlike FOREX, which is second to Windows in terms of reasons for people commiting suicides in the XXI century, this is an emerging market still to be discovered. It does not really require exceptional intellectual potential or outstanding analytical skills. All you need to do, apart from the factors mentioned above, is to stay up to date with the daily news which strongly affects the fluctuation of the courses.
Wish me good luck!