My Problems With Poker

I wondered whether I should write this article for this blog (TiamoPastoor) or my game studio blog (Pandaqi). In the end, I decided to put the article here because it’s a general topic that anyone can understand. Many people know the game of poker, many have opinions about it, and the lessons I’m going to mention here might be fun to read.

I am a game developer and someone with the attitude to “make the best out of every situation”. Almost laughably so, in fact, as I often pursue hopeless ideas anyway to see what I can make from them.

And yet, this article explains why I struggle to enjoy any part of poker. Why I struggle to call it a good game, and what I believe actually made it as big and well-known as it is. More specifically, I’ll be using the most common version of it: Texas Hold’Em.

How Poker Works

Here’s a short rules refresher. (Missing some details, those will come later.)

• Everyone gets 2 cards.
• One after another, faceup cards are revealed on the table.
• After certain reveals (3 cards-1 card-1 card), you go around the table and ask players to make a choice.
  • FOLD: throw away your cards. You’re out of this round.
  • CHECK: you increase your bet to the current highest bet to stay in the round.
  • RAISE: you bet even more than the current highest bet.
  • (If your bet is already high enough to participate, and the turn gets around to you, then you can knock on/tap the table to Check. To say you’re okay with this and do nothing.)
• Once all cards are revealed, players still in the game check the best combination they can make. (By combining their 2 cards with the 5 cards on the table.)
• Highest combination wins all the bets.

The past few years, I have regularly played this. Some people around me have latched onto poker as their go-to game. They seem to enjoy it, though they have similar struggles as I do.

And every single time, I felt like I was just playing the “disappointment lottery”.

Of course, as stated, I make the best of it. I play wholeheartedly, make daring moves, try some psychological warfare. I know all the combinations and their order off the top of my head. I started reading help guides and practicing by playing online. I got a little better over time.

I have several board games coming out this year that are all variants on poker. Because I tried to improve it, tried to change the things I didn’t like, thought about it so much that my head came up with all those ideas.

But I just do not like poker. At least not as a casual game or a party game. Why?

What makes poker a game

Now, it would be disingenuous to call poker “all luck” or “random”.

• You have the bluffing aspect. Something I should enjoy, because it’s about making the best out of possibly terrible hands. This is a way to combat bad luck of the draw.
• You have the betting aspect. Knowing how much your card is worth, which also depends on your position on the table. Knowing how much to raise to make others uncomfortable, which also depends on knowing the general play style of others.

There are certainly meaningful, tense decisions here. There is skill. As I said, simply playing the game made me better at it, as I realized a few clear errors I made.

Buuuuut …

Where it goes wrong

No stakes

The biggest tension in poker comes from possibly gaining or losing a lot of chips. The unpredictability of the cards revealed, and what your hand will score, combine with higher and higher bets to create a nice tension or adrenaline rush.

Because making a single wrong move might lose you lots of money, it’s all really tense and important. It’s addictive in the way many games are. Because fun is mostly a product of caring, and you obviously care a lot if you win that big pile of chips or not.

If you don’t play for real money, though, this doesn’t matter.

In all poker games I played, players just do whatever.

• We might start with too many chips, giving players too many options to bet or raise in tiny amounts.
• Any time you actually bet significantly, some people just fold by default. They really don’t care about losing those few chips, because, well, it’s not real money and the game is over in an hour.
• Other people do the reverse: they go along whatever you do. They, again, don’t care about having nothing and potentially losing a lot.

This ruins the exact two aspects that could make poker great.

There is no real bluffing. Either because people simply don’t care, or because people don’t even know how good/bad their cards are. (Or what the colored chips are worth … even after reminding them seven times …)

There is no real betting. People do the least possible, least interesting move every time. And if I think “this is boring, let’s raise significantly”, then people either randomly stop or go along whatever I do.

You might say that I’m just playing with the wrong people. And yes, any kind of (board) game is more fun and better if everyone plays better and does their best to win. But why would they play better? There are no real stakes, no real reason not to play that way if there’s no real money on the line.

The rules of poker invite playing in a way that ruins the game, and you can’t even fault players for it.

Because …

Defense over Offense

Now, if you play competitive poker for real money, you want to be aggressive. I have learned that and seen it in practice now. Either don’t participate, or participate hard. You won’t lose chips on mediocre hands. This also makes it hard for others to gauge how good your cards truly are, and might make them fold when they could’ve beaten you.

(And aggressive means something different depending on how many chips people have left. Raising by 5 at the start of the game is nothing. Might as well not have raised at all. Near the end of the game, when someone might have few money left at all, this can be a big deal to them.)

Again, however, in another setting this doesn’t work. All aggressive players, such as me and my brother (who was also probably bored), are either the first to win spectacularly or lose spectacularly.

Because, as stated, most casual poker settings will mostly have players that play randomly. And if the other variables are random, then playing just makes it a 50/50. I could make ludicrous bets on pretty good cards, and people just randomly go along or not. And sometimes, they will randomly have better cards, so I lose half my chips on that. If I play as smart as possible, so far as I learned from practice, I merely join the randomness of others.

I am very lucky? Nice, I very slowly get ahead of the other players. I am not lucky? I am slowly leaking chips and I feel powerless to do anything.

In all (casual) poker games I’ve played in real life, the most defensive player won. The one who simply left any time bets became serious, regardless of their cards or the situation. They’ll never lose big, and they’ll sometimes gain a little, which makes them hold out for a while.

And, well, can you blame them? If the goal of the game is to not be out of chips, then this strategy is by far the best one to hold out. Stack conservation and all. If the biggest “punishment” of a poker night is that you’re out early and have to sit and watch, you’re going to play in a way that means you never go broke.

Again, this is a decision of the players and not the game. But the game invites and encourages this behavior, and I can’t fault players for it.

Overhead without reward

Poker has quite a bit of “overhead”. Bookkeeping you need to do between actually playing and doing the fun part.

• Move the Dealer + Small/Big Blind
• Shuffle and deal again.
• The Small Blind must bet (before seeing their cards), and the Big Blind must double that.
• There are often situations where people are just endlessly knocking after one another, as nobody is sure anymore if they still need to “Check” or not. (Or the entire table is waiting on one distracted player to make that decision …)
• People can shove chips forward without even knowing their value, which forces others to count them and find the exact value they need to replicate.
• Then, at the end, give the chips to the right person and collect all cards again.

These are all steps that take a while, that someone must do (correctly), that can be forgotten or delayed. And none of it is interesting or actually the core of poker.

Yes, that “Small/Big Blind” idea has some merit. It forces every round to at least have a bet. It puts pressure on people right from the start. That “positioning” is important again: as the Small Blind, you get the last chance to bet before the first cards are revealed.

But it requires explanation. It requires waiting on people to do it, or to move the tokens for it correctly. And in practice, this is never used for anything. People just bid the least possible amount, always. Because bid more, and everyone folds. Because bidding more feels like a stupid thing to do when you haven’t seen any cards yet. The stakes in a casual game are far too low to take massive risks and rely on massive luck.

Similarly, nobody really raises anything. The first player who could raise just bids some amount they’re comfortable with. Everyone else follows. We knock for a while until we think we’re all agreed and we continue.

And again, why would players do otherwise? This is mostly completely random. People usually have shit cards that don’t mean anything until the final card is revealed. So many rounds are won by people who are lucky and get a pair on that final card, while the others have absolutely nothing. Bidding anything before you’ve seen all cards is too big a risk to take.

Poker tries to combat this randomness with the bluffing and bidding. Because yes, I could raise quite high, again and again, on terrible cards. I might try to convince people I have something great, hoping they all fold and I at least get some chips. As stated, though, this doesn’t work because people play either extremely conservatively or extremely randomly.

Many rounds end up with only one player left before we’ve seen more than 3 cards. The dealer has barely dealt the cards, and we already need to do all that bookkeeping again.

As such, all this extra work to setup, manage and play each round often takes longer than the actual round. And the winnings are peanuts, for whoever happened to stumble into a pair or get everyone to fold.

Too much overhead for too little reward.

Not as easy as people think

This leads into my final point. A large part of the reason I played so much poker is because people convinced themselves (and other guests/potential players) it was an easy game. It is not.

Partially, they believe this because I handle all the bookkeeping. (A reason why people do tend to ask me to play with them, I suppose.)

Partially, people believe this because they know poker. Because they have played it a few times, and when you know the rules, you always consider them simple.

And partially, people believe this because you can do absolutely nothing and still do fine in poker. You can, for example, just randomly fold OR match the exact chips of another. You don’t even need to understand the game or see your own cards. When you get to the end, others will tell you if you’ve won.

Players have actually won an entire poker night this way. It doesn’t matter that this is a rare occurrence and they will lose the other 95% of the time. Because there are no real stakes, and you just get new chips/reset when you play poker later, players aren’t inclined to have any strategy at all.

You can randomly stumble into great cards or a great situation. You can also make all the right calls and just get extremely unlucky and lose. The core of the game is deemed so “simple” because the option “let’s do nothing” or “let’s do something random” or “let’s hang back and see” is ALWAYS available. So you can just completely ignore any complexity or part you don’t understand, if you want.

If you actually want to play properly, though, poker is not simple. You have all those extra bookkeeping steps I just explained. You have all the possible combinations and how they score. And then you have stuff like all-in, handling ties, etcetera.

If someone truly has no idea how it works, explaining it to them will take five times longer than you think. Then you play a “test round”, and they start to get a grip on it. And then three rounds later, they suddenly say “ooooh, you must combine your cards with those on the table? Now I understand!” Once the game is almost over, they’ll finally get a handle on it.

And they might even be winning at that point.

You might say “well that’s dumb, you’re playing with dumb players”. I don’t think so—it’s also irrelevant. A game should not be ruined by someone struggling to understand some rules the first time they play.

I guess the biggest conclusion to this section is: there are countless far simpler, better, less annoying, less effortful, more engaging board games or party games you could play than poker.

An example

Okay, let’s play a hypothetical round. This kind of thing happens over and over in poker games I play.

Preflop (before any cards are revealed):

• The Small/Big Blind do nothing weird. They just bid their lowest chip, and then double that.
• Everyone simply checks (matches big blind).
• I look at my cards. Pretty mediocre. (As 99% of hands are.) Just a 6 and an Q, different suits. But nobody else raised, and the stakes are low, so let’s check too.

Flop (first three cards revealed):

• A 2, 4 and 7.
• Nobody does anything.
• This might signal to me that they all have mediocre cards. But I know the other players, and it might not mean anything at all. Some are very likely to have higher cards than me. Some might already have a pair.
• There’s a really low probability of getting a straight, that’s all I have.
• But why leave now? Nobody does anything. I check too.

Turn (next card revealed):

• Now we have: 2, 4, 7, 4.
• Nobody does anything. Okay, I might start to believe nobody has anything good.
• Okay, I am very unlikely to win here. Someone might have three of a kind. My chance of a straight is ruined.
• But if cards are that bad, and I want to do something, I’ll raise. With an amount that isn’t nothing, but also isn’t extremely high.
• Everyone folds. One person comes along.

River (final card revealed):

• Now we have: 2, 4, 7, 4, 3.
• Nobody does anything.
• I decide to bluff and raise significantly. The other person shrugs and comes along.

Reveal: They have a 3 and an 8. They win a lot of chips by having a pair of 3s.

The other person had no reason at all to join in. They had absolutely nothing and were very likely to be beaten by anything. But because they just do random shit, I can’t read any of that or play into it. So now I’ve lost a lot of money by simply getting unlucky (or someone else getting lucky).

What if I’d done something else?

• I might have folded, but that would’ve meant doing absolutely nothing for the umpteenth time in a row. (And many hands are even worse than a 6 and a Q.)
• I might not have raised, but then the winnings of that round would have been so minimal that I’d have lost them the next time I became Small/Big Blind. (It would also be boring too.)
• I might have raised far more that first time … but that wouldn’t have mattered. Someone probably still randomly tagged along.
• I might have raised less … but that wouldn’t have mattered. With tiny raises, all people will just tag along. And as stated, they’re all likely to have something better than I did.

As such, whatever strategy I would play, it would either be extremely boring (do nothing/do the minimal) or extremely stupid (relying fully on massive luck).

A game where your only options are “be boring” or “pray to lady luck” … is not a good game.

If I play such a round in a poker game (with an offline AI at different difficulty levels), they usually do the following.

• Really bad cards, such as 3 and 8, are just folded.
• At any other time, they’re more aggressive and raise. This give me a more interesting decision about whether to fold, check or raise.
• By the time you reach the end, stuff has happened, bets are serious, and there are two players left.
• A tense reveal—which I might still loose, of course, but now the playing was actually fun and meaningful

I have never played for real money and never will. So I can’t say anything about that, but I believe poker will be a much better game then that follows more meaningful behavior.

In a typical poker game, there are really only a few rounds when anybody has anything. And those rounds tend to “congregate”, because the only time multiple players continue and bid high, is when they all have something good. So you have, say, one or two “big reveals” or “fun moments” where two or three players reveal their massive combination for a massive amount of chips. Those are the only highlights; all other rounds are boring drivel as I illustrated above.

How do we fix this?

Well, the frank but harsh response would be: I’d suggest you play other and better board games, or only play poker with players who have the right mind-set of really trying to win rather than not caring or not losing.

As I said, I made several “poker-inspired board games” the past year. (They will release somewhere during this year.) They explore different ways to both heavily simplify all that extra fluff and add more fun and interesting decisions.

A simpler game isn’t “better” perse, but it means more people will actually play the game, rounds take less time, you need less table space and material, and a whole other host of advantages.

Similarly, more strategy doesn’t necessarily make a better game. You play a game to have fun, and you can get fun from just getting lucky, or trying something and seeing what happens. In general, though, fun comes from problem solving and ownership. You want to be able to have information and make a meaningful decision on that, to solve a problem and feel like you’ve earned it.

So that’s what my games did.

• One game places the possible “combinations” on cards. By taking that card, you “bid” that you’re going to fulfill it. This means no memorization of what’s what, and you can actually make the most out of each hand. (The player who has the HIGHEST combination is rewarded, especially if they risk a lot on that. But others still score points, just less.)
• One game simplifies it to just two “combinations” (“all of same number” and “all of same type”). Moreover, you only go around the table once (no endless checking or raising cycles), and you get more cards at the start because you also bid using your cards. In other words, the higher you bid, the fewer cards in your hand, and thus the less likely you score well.
• One game asks you to place the cards in your hand, in turn, in a shared 2D grid. That’s how many combinations will appear over time, and you can take on “contracts” if you believe one will appear. (With a heavy penalty if not.)
• I have an idea about starting with all the chips you’ll ever have, and the numbers only dwindling over time. Simply the last player standing wins. (This puts higher stakes on whatever you bid, as you can never get it back. Didn’t make this one yet, though.)
• I have an idea where part of your hand is open and part of the “table cards” is hidden. And you can make combinations with other player’s cards. This gives meaningful information to act on, but not too much. It asks you “which cards do you want to show, risking giving another player something great to maybe mislead a few?”
• Several of these games use far fewer cards, and push any other complexity to optional expansions. They also often use special action cards. They have simple powers that can help or hinder, that can shake up a round in fun and meaningful ways.

All these games remove the bookkeeping. No Small/Big Blind or Dealer; we achieve its effects in other ways. You just shuffle and deal cards once (or each round); you don’t need to collect all cards at the end and reshuffle and re-deal all the time.

They simplify the rules. They put the possible scoring combinations on cards or on the board, so no memorization needed. You can often choose scoring combinations, and I can allow easier variants now, which makes it more likely that any hand will actually score something.

These ideas put the bidding against others, yes, but mostly against yourself. You still have a big dosis of luck and risk/reward, but it’s not “all or nothing” or “I randomly lost the game to someone with a lucky final draw”. You can fail to win the round, but succeed your personal goal. A shit hand can be saved or “made the best of”.

Conclusion

So there you have it. The only reason poker is so big is because of the gambling aspect. When money is involved, this can get real tense and you can have meaningful decisions. When players can play semi-randomly, or barely at all, it’s just a disappointment lottery.

You have a lot of decisions, but they’re not meaningful. They are all mostly random or a decision you just don’t want to take because it’s boring and stagnant.

There is a lot of overhead, moving around tokens and cards and explaining extra things, for barely any reward.

In practice, because of the somewhat loose structure of it all, you get many delays too. Distracted players. Accidentally dropping chips. Not knowing if you can continue to the next phase yet. Miscounting.

And in the end, you might get 1 or 2 highlights. A really fun moment when you are lucky and score big, or three players all have some amazing combination and there’s a tense reveal. But that’s far too little for a game that takes many hours and is otherwise mostly “do nothing” or “do something, hope for luck, get nothing”.

Those were my thoughts about poker, in way too many words, and I really hope I can play another board game now,

Tiamo