KEEPING SCORE WITH MONEY
There are other games where bets are made directly among players-golf, pool, tennis, backgammon, and gin come to mind-but these games exist without bets, they aren’t really about money.
Poker is about money; without money it just wouldn’t exit.
It’s sometimes said that poker is not a game of cards played with money –it’s a game of money played with cards.
Just because poker is a game of money doesn’t mean money is always the point.
When you get your competitive juices flowing, winning is the point.
Winning means money, but at some point the money often becomes a secondary aspect of your motivation. A similar process occurs when you lose.
The late Jack Strauss, a well-known poker player from San Antonio, said it best, “The bad thing about losing isn’t the money, it’s the embarrassment.”
The idea that poker is game of money but isn’t always about money is another topic we come back to later in the book.
As I pointed out earlier, the game attracts many players, not because of the opportunity to win money itself, but because they enjoy the risk associated with an opportunity to win money.
This is a very important concept.
For these players it’s the game itself that is important, not the winning.
You’ll see many losing players who seem to behave irrationally.
If you keep in mind that, for some, the hunt is more thrilling than the kill, you’ll see that their behavior is often quite rational, and you’ll do a better job of reading these players.
Again,we’ll come back to this subject.
why play poker ? / unique features of poker / poker versus other casino games
