"Life, like poker has an element of risk. It shouldn't be avoided. It should be faced." Edward Norton

I play online poker for play money.  Before it was outlawed I played for real money.  Never much – a few hundreds of dollars.  I lost.  When real money got outlawed I expected that the quality of the games with play money would diminish – but that didn’t happen.  There were sufficient number of people who played and wanted to win that the games maintained an interest for me. 

One, through their successes, builds up a “bank account” of play money so you can play in games with an increasing “buy-in.”  At the lowest level the games resembles bingo – purely random.  But with a bit of rationality and skill you can win more than your share and get into better games (i.e., higher buy-ins) where inherent skill plays a bigger role. 

Poker is a game of randomness and the best you can hope for is that by playing the odds, in the long run, you’ll win.  Not every pot, not every tournament, but more than your share.  I started with about 1000 chips – given gratis when you start - and now have over 15 million.  It’s taken me a couple of years to do that.  One has bad luck – and good luck.  There are unbelievable ways to win and to lose.

“Psychology Today” has a nice article   ( http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cui-bono/201103/life-poker )  about how poker is a metaphor for life.  Some of us are dealt strong hands at birth and some of us aren’t so lucky.  As humans – not in a casino - do we care for those who were dealt a bad hand at birth?

I also play online chess.  In chess there is no luck.  Complete knowledge is visible.  The two games – chess and poker – are completely opposites in how you approach them.  In poker – as in baseball – if you hit .300 you’re probably an all-star.  In chess you’re a dismal failure.

I find that in periods when I’m doing well in poker I do poorly in chess and vice-versa.  In poker you have to go with your instincts more.  “Is this a good time to bluff?”  If one never bluffs in poker, one loses.  It’s impossible to bluff in chess.

Why can’t one rely on both instincts and rationality at the same time?

2014 Lester C. Welch