Marcus Bateman / Marcus Bateman / 08 January 2009 / Leave a comment

Why and how people choose to play poker is a very personal matter. Some people just enjoy the buzz of gambling, not hugely bothered about their bottom line at the end of the year, and are more there to just play the game and have a good time. Other players can come to a point where they basically treat poker as a job, just grinding away and staying emotionally indifferent to what is going on a round them.

Deciding on the purpose of the game to you is critical if you want to feel happy about your game

There are valid arguments for both perspectives in my opinion. If the simple pursuit of money is all you are after then there are many better ways than poker; while conversely, if you only want the buzz of gambling, there are more immediate and adrenalin fueled ways out there.

So we are left with poker being a sort of middle ground - a gambling arena where people who enjoy not only skill games and competition, but also gambling, can play. Deciding on the purpose of the game to you is critical if you want to feel happy about your game - as an example of why this concept is important I want to look at the difference between the late, great players Chip Reese and Stu Ungar.

Both of these players were behemoths on the tables. Their technical skills and reading abilities were all second to none, but their lives off the tables were radically different. Stu Ungar was a degenerate gambler, he died broke in a cheap motel room, despite having won an estimated $30 million in his playing career. Chip Reese died a millionaire, surrounded by a loving family and having been consistently at the top of the game for over twenty years.

To each of these players, the purpose of the game was very different. Ungar saw the game as just another way for him to gamble, and despite being an incredible player, he would never show long term profits due to his willingness to just push it as hard as he could. Poker to Reese was a way to provide for him and his family, and enable him to live a comfortable life outside of the world of gambling.

Neither of these players take on why to play poker is necessarily wrong, but it is important that you are comfortable with the reasons you play, otherwise those hard losing nights can take a much greater psychological toll than they otherwise would.

Being honest with yourself is essential to poker success, and being honest about the reasons you are playing poker is arguably the most important of all of them to be honest about.

As the old poker saying goes - 'There are only three types of poker players: Winners, losers, and liars', and only one of these is confused about why they play poker, and they are lying to themselves as much as to anyone else.

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