I Love Poker; I Love Boxing; I Love Gambling; I Love Extremes (by Harald Pia)
Harald Pia
Harald Pia is a well known author in the industry and a managing share holder in Lady Hammer Casino. He is also a professional boxing manager!
It is as old as humanity. Gambling, with its own unique scent. An aroma of unrestrained greed in which the hope for profits lures and the losses lead one to abysses and into despair until being completely locked out of their own dreams.
Free from illusions of more light in the dark and eyes that are extinguished by the hopelessness of one's addiction, gambling has always fascinated humans.
It has always been coupled with a physical struggle. Not only did the Romans know the game of dice, but they could also bet on a gladiator's victory in the Coliseum. This is already very similar to today's big boxing events, whose absolute TOP events take place almost always in high-end casinos, such as Caesars Palace or MGM.
The social perception of gambling has gone through intensive changes. A privilege of the nobility, at times completely lawless, sometimes punishable!! Today's gambling owes the change to the increasingly positive image of poker.
Nowadays poker is much more than a game of strategy and luck. In the meantime, the term poker game has spread as a winged metaphor for all those areas of politics, sports, business and personal life where you have to deal with people who represent opposing interests.
The better you use and know your own arguments and strengths, the more precise you are about your opponent’s potential and their ability to use their skills and control the situation, the sooner you will succeed in achieving your self-imposed goals in the upcoming negotiations or disputes. It is a permanent struggle between each competitor, among the best psychologist, the best tactician, ultimately the best trained wins.
Poker has gone through an extensive change of image, in particular due to its new reputation, of not just a mere gambling, but above all of a strategic game.
In addition to its psychological finesse, it owes its positive image in the public perception due to the mathematics that I personally treasure. If one believes the reports on various tournaments of the WSOP [World Series of Poker], it is full of graduated mathematicians and computer scientists. I would like to put the required mathematical claim into perspective. The required knowledge of mathematics is at a very manageable level, which even in the ideal case corresponds to extended basic knowledge of the probability theory.
Nevertheless, the expected value is of paramount importance. It refers to the average expected value of an event. For any long-term successful poker pro, the motto is: Avoid betting with a negative expectation value and only play when the bet, the winning percentage, and the amount of potential winnings give a positive expected value.
The life of a poker professional seems exciting: freedom to choose their own working hours, the chance to win millions, luxurious status symbols, a lavish lifestyle, traveling around the world, and doing nothing more than to compete with opponents at the poker table for nights. This is the main motivation for many players to face the nerve-wracking duels of the poker game in countless nights.
+ Poker has sex appeal! Clearly, the cool guys, who deprive their opponents of all the chips (and money) during nerve-racking duels, possess an image that also helps make their lives sexually active. A little fitness wouldn’t hurt. Therefore, you should not spoil your body only with “fast food,” but spend an hour or two paying attention to your diet and keeping your body in shape. This is a demand that not only the men among the professional players meet. More and more aggressive and successful, active female poker players not only earn six-figure sums in tournament wins, but also provide a feast for the eyes.
As long as the human beings populate this planet, sex is and will remain one of the main driving forces of anyone looking for contention with competitors. And if the victory alone is not enough to find love for life, the price won will definitely help pay a willing prostitute.
This does not only sound appealing, it is tempting. Therefore, it is not surprising that many dream of a life as a poker pro. In order to win the tournaments as a poker professional, you do not have to attend a university but rather be born one. You need a talent and instincts that you cannot learn. You either have it or not. Certainly, experience and a coordinated, precise preparation for the opponents help, but this is not everything. All of the above help only if the player possesses the necessary psychological and intellectual characteristics.
The player gives themselves the title of a poker pro but whether they can really call themselves one and whether they can make a living out of it is quickly shown by their profit or losses.
Every winner needs losers, and they are more likely to be poker fans who prefer having fun rather than money or tournament wins. Reads and strategies are all good, but the professional winner already is greedy when others are anxious.
A very good poker player has an excellent image of themselves and their skills. They calculate the expected profit before each move and bet only if it gives a positive expected value. Patience and discipline are among their outstanding characteristics. They are not cocky, nor do they try to compensate for previously suffered losses by taking quick risks. Rampant, uncontrolled greed is foreign to them; they know exactly when the right time to quit the game has come.
From time to time, however, it does not go any differently than to play all or nothing, which has to be the most exciting, the most dangerous moment in every gambling game. Nobody can escape the fascination of a player throwing all or any of their chips into the pot. What a kick, it takes a few seconds, the last card is open and (especially in large live tournaments) under the thunderous applause of the audience, the better hand is announced as the winner. Every successful poker player has been in an all-in heads-up before, and as invigorating as their adrenaline-pumping body is, they know that in the next few moments, it's not his or her own skills that matter, but luck, as in the vast majority of cases.
Especially preferred by aggressive and greedy players, many pros know that it is not necessarily advantageous to play only on the big tournaments. The larger the field of participants, the higher the probability that you will be forced into an all-in, and more often luck is what determines the outcome of the game. Of course, clever blind stealing can also force the opposing players into an all-in, but this is a strategy that requires the highest level of skill and experience.
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I Love Poker; I Love Boxing; I Love Gambling; I Love Extremes (by Harald Pia)
Q&A with Karl Wijkmark, CMO at 21.com
Harald Pia – Lady Hammer Casino
