This originally started as a response to zeroskill’s post, but it is a topic that I think a lot of people struggle with, including myself, and I decided to kind of go with my rant a bit.

I always take issue when people try to "find the meaning" behind poker and justify it to themselves as really creating some “good.” We can say that we provide people with entertainment value, but that has to be a tiny % of the the player pool we are making money from. How much fun do you think most fish have when they dust off a few buyins? Many players do play purely for enjoyment, but if you play live [which may not be representative of online players, but I doubt its that far off] you see that most fish arent happy and most likely have some kind of gambling problem. What about the bad regs who have mortgage payments and families to support and we play them day in and day out and come out ahead? I think if you are playing poker you should make it as enjoyable an experience for your opponent [and yourself] as you can, because this makes its more enjoyable for you and likely will improve your bottom line. I feel fairly strongly that we simply arent going to be able to justify poker as a net positive to society and especially to the fish, unless we are playing exclusively in friendly private games where people have the money to spare and are really playing for enjoyment.

Poker is about exploiting people in and out of the game. In game we are directly taking advantage of their leaks, and these are caused because out of game they havent done as much work as we have and thus dont play as well. It is a little grim to look at it that way, but thats the most honest way to see it. Further, I also think a lot of people look down at poker players for not “adding anything to society” as a way to make them feel better about their own career which likely doesn’t contribute much either. Look at the vast majority of people with full time jobs and ask yourself what they are contributing to society. They may be contributing to the success of a corporation that provides some service to its customers [for a profit], but how is that a great achievement? People with those types of jobs that try to justify it as truly contributing to society are rationalizing just as much as the poker players who want to pretend they are providing a service.

Poker is a game that takes the sheeps clothing off capitalism and shows it for what it is. Im not anti-capitalist in any sense, I just feel that people often don’t want to treat it for what it is; somebody exploiting somebody else for personal gain. This doesn’t mean nothing of value is created for the consumer, and usually it is, but that is almost never the main motivator for an action, instead people create value because it leads to personal gains. I often still feel bad when I take a lot off somebody, but its their choice to play a game that I am better than them at. It isn’t always good for the conscience but I believe thinking about it in as honest terms as you can is the best way to approach it to reduce the feelings of cognitive dissonance